National Student Clearinghouse and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Announce New Board Members

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National Student Clearinghouse and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Announce New Board Members

HERNDON, VA – (JULY 20, 2021) – The National Student Clearinghouse and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center announced today new members to each of their respective Board of Directors. In addition, Dr. Anne Bryant, Executive Director Emerita, National School Boards Association, was named board chair, and Michael Collins, Vice President, Jobs for the Future and Chair of the Research Center Board, was chosen as board vice chair.

The Clearinghouse is governed by a board of directors comprised of a cross-section of the constituencies that it serves, including representatives from educational institutions, educational associations, and the education finance industry. The makeup of the Clearinghouse’s board reflects its status as a trusted, neutral, and reliable source for educational information and services.

New Clearinghouse board members:

Dr. Jack E. Daniels, III, President, Madison Area Technical College

Dr. Sharon Morrissey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic & Workforce Programs, Virginia Community College System

New Research Center board members:

Dr. Sharon Morrissey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic & Workforce Programs, Virginia Community College System

Dr. Carissa Moffat Miller, Chief Executive Officer, Council of Chief State School Officers, and current Clearinghouse Board member

Quotes:

Dr. Anne Bryant, Executive Director Emerita, National School Boards Association

For more than 28 years, the Clearinghouse has provided data and analysis for more than 3,600 colleges and universities, the U.S. Government, and the public at large. Now, as the nation faces extraordinary challenges, we welcome the opportunity to meet the new demands across the K-20 and the workforce continuum. I am honored to serve as the Chair of the Clearinghouse Board of Directors, and we welcome Dr. Daniels and Dr. Morrissey to the National Student Clearinghouse boards.

Dr. Daniels, president of Madison Area Technical College, brings a wealth of experience, leadership, and commitment to the educational attainment of students. His expertise includes strategic and master planning, Economic Development, and Community engagement.

Dr. Morrissey, Senior Vice Chancellor for the Virginia Community College system, has a vast and deep understanding of community colleges and the role they play in Workforce Development. Given the Clearinghouse’s increasing role in the workforce credentialing arena, she will contribute greatly to our strategic thinking and planning.

Rick Torres, President and CEO, National Student Clearinghouse

The Clearinghouse’s goal of data and information democratization has never been more relevant than it is today. To accomplish this end, we are accelerating the evolution of our data custodial role and information provision capacities to extend well beyond traditional education to provide a more holistic data driven view of education, skills, and workforce pathways to better directly serve lifelong learners, and institutions of learning and enterprise.

With that in mind, we enthusiastically welcome these national leaders serving the community college and technical college eco-systems in the United States. Their insights will greatly help inform how our mission of access to the most relevant data by participants in the Clearinghouse can be enhanced via further data extensions and analytical services. I look forward to their insights in support of moving the Clearinghouse’s mission forward.

Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the Research Center

The Research Center is very grateful to Dr. Morrissey and Dr. Moffat Miller for volunteering to serve on our board. Because of their extensive experience in research and education, the Research Center will greatly benefit from their input in our efforts to help secondary and postsecondary education leaders navigate the current environment post-pandemic and beyond.

Dr. Jack E. Daniels, III, President, Madison Area Technical College

I am honored to be selected as a Board member to the National Student Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse provides a great service to education institutions in providing accurate data that is essential in enrollment and program planning as institutions push the completion agenda at their respective colleges and universities. Providing input and guidance to this process and data analysis is extremely important and I welcome that opportunity.

Dr. Sharon Morrissey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic & Workforce Programs, Virginia Community College System

I look forward to representing community colleges on the Clearinghouse and Research Center Boards to support the Clearinghouse’s ongoing goal of providing disaggregated data to inform institutions about students’ increasingly complex education journeys, including credit for prior learning, stackable credentials, industry-recognized certifications, and lifelong learning.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^®

The National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit formed in 1993, is the trusted source for and leading provider of higher education verifications and electronic education record exchanges.

The Clearinghouse serves as a single point of contact for the collection and timely exchange of accurate and comprehensive enrollment, degree, and certificate records on behalf of its more than 3,600 participating higher education institutions, which represent 98 percent of all students in public and private U.S. institutions. The Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni.

Through its verification, electronic exchange, and reporting services, the Clearinghouse saves the education community cumulatively over $750 million annually. Most Clearinghouse services are provided to colleges and universities at little or no charge, including enhanced transcript and research services, enabling institutions to redistribute limited staff and budget resources to more important student service efforts. Clearinghouse services are designed to facilitate an institution’s compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, The Higher Education Act, and other applicable laws. The Clearinghouse has signed the Student Privacy Pledge and is the first recipient of ikeepsafe.org’s FERPA compliance badge, which was awarded to its StudentTracker for High Schools service.

For more information, visit www.studentclearinghouse.org.

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College Persistence Rate Drops An Unprecedented 2 Percentage Points

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College Persistence Rate Drops An Unprecedented 2 Percentage Points

Of 2.6 Million First-Time Freshmen, 74% Returned for Their Second Year

HERNDON, VA – (JULY 8, 2021) – The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported today that of the 2.6 million students who entered college as first-time freshmen in fall 2019, 74 percent returned to college for their second year. This rate represents a pandemic-related, unprecedented one-year drop of two percentage points in this important early student success indicator.

“We can now add increased attrition of 2019 freshmen to the severe impacts of the pandemic,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “These losses erase recent improvements that colleges have made in keeping learners on track early. They will ripple through higher education for years.”

Highlights from the 2021 Persistence and Retention Report include:

There was a marked decline in first-year persistence rate in fall 2020 after remaining stable for the past four years. The overall persistence rate dropped two percentage points to 73.9 percent for fall 2019 beginning college students, its lowest level since 2012.
Community colleges showed the steepest persistence rate decline over last year of all institution sectors (down 3.5 percentage points to 58.5%).
The persistence rate gaps by race and ethnicity in the 2019 cohort remain as wide as in the previous cohort years, with approximately a 22-percentage point gap between the highest (86.5% for Asian students) and the lowest (64.9% for Black students). White (79.3%) and Latinx (68.6%) students reflect a gap of nearly 11 percentage points. The overall first-year persistence rate fell the most among Latinx students (down 3.2 percentage points from 71.8% to 68.6%).
Retention rates declined the most in the community college sector (down 2.1 percentage points to 51.6%) whereas the rates went up in the public four-year college sector (up 0.7 percentage points to 76.3%).
Freshmen transferring out in their first year dropped somewhat more than those remaining at their starting institution (-1.2 percentage points vs. -0.7 percentage points). This pattern reflects constrained student mobility during the pandemic as documented in our COVID-19 transfer report.
Bachelor’s degree-seeking students in liberal arts majors had the largest persistence rate drop (down 1.6 percentage points to 88.1%). But biological and biomedical sciences and health care majors increased 1.4 and 1.8 percentage points to 82.3 and 78.9 percent, respectively, in their retention rates.

The Persistence and Retention report series examines first-year persistence and retention rates for beginning postsecondary students. Persistence rate is measured by the percentage of students who return to college at any institution for their second year, while retention rate is by the percentage of students who return to the same institution. Students attaining a credential in their first year are accounted for in persistence and retention rates.

The report is designed to help institutions understand trends and patterns in this important early success indicator, and identify disparities by institutional type, state, degree level, starting enrollment intensity, major field, and student demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and race and ethnicity.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^® Research Center™

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations as part of a national effort to better inform education leaders and policymakers. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes.

The Research Center currently collects data from more than 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represent 97 percent of the nation’s postsecondary enrollments in degree-granting institutions, as of fall 2019. Clearinghouse data track enrollments nationally and are not limited by institutional and state boundaries. To learn more, visit https://nscresearchcenter.org.

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