The National Student Clearinghouse Contracts with State of Rhode Island for its DiplomaVerify℠ High School Program

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The National Student Clearinghouse Contracts with State of Rhode Island for its DiplomaVerify℠ High School Program

State is the latest Clearinghouse customer of high school diploma verification service

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 27, 2023) – The National Student Clearinghouse today announced that it has contracted with Rhode Island’s Department of Education to provide the Clearinghouse’s DiplomaVerify℠ high school diploma verification services to the 67 high schools statewide.

“The Clearinghouse is pleased to offer our verification services to Rhode Island to support their high schools and students,” said Phil Smith, Senior Manager, Secondary Education Business Development. “With DiplomaVerify’s immediate online and FERPA-compliant high school diploma verifications, Rhode Island schools will benefit from the reduction of manual work, which will free time for their counselors so they can spend it with students. Another benefit for the schools is that their graduates will qualify for jobs faster.”

Rhode Island’s Department of Education understood the benefits of a statewide contract due to its longstanding history with the Clearinghouse as a trusted partner for its student data and information services under a secure platform. Other benefits were the efficiency of the work that will be offloaded by the service to provide immediate online verifications.

DiplomaVerify uses data that a school, district, or consortium currently submits to the Clearinghouse to give employers 24-7 online access to diploma verifications. The service helps to reduce the time a school spends on verification work and is offered for those schools that have the StudentTracker^® for High Schools customers.

The DiplomaVerify is used to verify high school diplomas for high education institutions and many employers, including those in government, the military, healthcare, and retail.

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. Besides working with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions, the Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni. Education partners throughout the nation trust the National Student Clearinghouse because they know we take our commitment to student privacy very seriously. We focus on serving our customers with high-quality services that they expect from us. The Clearinghouse is scrupulous in its concern for student privacy and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects students’ privacy rights in their education records. For more details, visit studentclearinghouse.org.

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Undergraduate Credential Earners Declined for the First Time in a Decade

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Undergraduate Credential Earners Declined for the First Time in a Decade

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 16, 2023) – Undergraduate credential earners declined for the first time in a decade (-1.6% or -58,800 graduates from the previous year), according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. A total of 3.6 million people earned an undergraduate-level credential during the 2021-22 academic year, a new low not seen in four years (see figure 1).

“The pandemic’s impact on higher education has gone beyond the declining numbers of current students and is now showing up as a drop in the annual number of new graduates as well, taking it all the way back to the level of 2016-17.” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “This is a setback to those seeking higher postsecondary attainment rates, leaving the nation and many states falling further behind on goals for a highly educated workforce.”

The Undergraduate Degree Earners report demonstrates that the drop was caused by an unprecedented one-year loss of first-time graduates (-1.9% or -50,700), accounting for 86.2% of the overall decline. This marks the largest decline in first-time graduates since 2012-13, for which we have the data available. Graduates with a prior award also fell but at a smaller rate than first-time graduates (-0.8% or -8,100). As a result, first-time graduates are a declining share of the overall undergraduate credential earners, comprising 72.9 percent in 2021-22.

Other key findings:

Among first-time graduates, associate degree completions fell sharply (-7.6% or -56,800), followed by baccalaureate recipients (-2.4% or -36,000). First-time bachelor’s degree earners fell for the first time in a decade. In contrast, first-time certificate completers grew considerably (+9.0% or +42,200).
Declines are particularly steep among first-time graduates 25 years and older (-4.1% or -30,600). Declines are smaller among graduates 24 years and younger (-1.0% or -19,100).
Baccalaureate earners who had a prior associate degree decreased (-2.5% or -11,600), after having steadily grown over the past eight years. It has caused the overall non-first-time graduate numbers to slide for the first time in a decade (-0.8% or -8,100).

The Undergraduate Degree Earners report series, published annually, provides demographic and educational profile data for all students graduating with an undergraduate credential each year. Undergraduate credentials may include associate and bachelor’s degrees and certificates. In the current report, we profile graduates in the 2021-22 academic year, with a focus on first-time versus non-first-time graduates, and changes in demographics and education credentials received since the 2012-13 academic year. The Appendix provides state-level and regional trends, in addition to the national graduate profiles by age and type of credential received.

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. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

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Transfers from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges Drop Nearly 8% from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022

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Transfers from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges Drop Nearly 8% from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022

Overall Transfer Enrollment Declines 7% Since Fall 2020

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 9, 2023) – Transfer enrollment from two-year colleges to four-year institutions, called upward transfer, fell nearly 8% in fall 2022 compared to the previous year, while reverse and lateral transfer began to rise, according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Upward transfer declines accounted for the majority of fall 2022’s transfer enrollment losses and deteriorated during the pandemic for students at all income levels.

The new, post-pandemic, report series Transfer and Progress: Fall 2022 Report reveals that baccalaureate degree programs appear increasingly out of reach for community college students, particularly those enrolled in urban and suburban community colleges, and in transfer-focused community colleges.

Furthermore, fall transfer enrollment slowed its decline in 2022, but still decreased at a faster rate than non-freshman undergraduates that did not transfer. Non-freshmen undergraduate enrollment declined at a slower rate in fall 2022 compared to the previous year (-1.5% vs. -4.1%) but declines continued to be steeper for transfers than non-transfers (-2.3% vs. -1.4%), resulting in a 6.9% decrease in transfer students since fall 2020 (see Figure 1).

“Unlike the stabilization that we saw in the general enrollment numbers last month, the number of students who transferred in fall 2022 is continuing the downward slide it has been on since the pandemic began in 2020, and this is especially true for upward transfers,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “It is very encouraging, however, that among those who transferred from community colleges into four-year schools six years ago, students are now completing bachelor’s degrees at higher rates than before, despite the disruptions of the pandemic.”

Additional research highlights include:

Transfer pathways to highly selective public flagship and private institutions are dominated by students from the top 20% in the U.S. household income distribution.
Women fared worse than men in transfer enrollment overall, especially among continuing transfers.
Only younger (20 or younger) transfer students made gains in fall 2022.
For the first time since the pandemic, transfer increased among students returning from a stop out (+5.4% or an increase of 26,800 students over Fall 2021). Primarily online institutions accounted for nearly 40% of this growth.
The transfer-in population is a diminishing share of the four-year college student body for all races except Black students enrolled in private nonprofit four-years.
Baccalaureate degree attainment rates improved for the fall 2016 community college entering cohort even during their pandemic-impacted 5th and 6th years of enrollment.

Background Information

The Transfer and Progress report series is a redesign of the Research Center’s two primary transfer reports, combining the enrollment focus of the COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress reports, which provides how many students enrolled as a transfer within a current term, with the outcomes focus of the Tracking Transfer reports, which provide what percent of entering community college students reach transfer and completion milestones within six years.

Included in this report is a new experimental analysis of students’ income to provide insights to how closely postsecondary transfer pathways track students’ socioeconomic circumstances before and after the pandemic began. This new income proxy measure matches students’ address data with U.S. Census Bureau data on the income profile of the census tract. Coming out of the pandemic, this report series aims to better serve the education community and policymakers with new, timely, and detailed data that are only available through the Clearinghouse.

This first report covers 11.5 million undergraduate students without a prior bachelor’s degree that were enrolled in fall 2022 in a three-year fixed panel of institutions (fall 2020 to 2022), representing approximately 89.0% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions. Additionally, to establish the pre-pandemic baseline for all new analyses, an expanded five-year fixed panel of institutions (fall 2018 to fall 2022) was employed, that represents 11 million undergraduates without a prior bachelor’s degree and 83.8% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions.

The new report series was created with support from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X220022 to Teachers College, Columbia University as part of the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network, for the expanded analyses on the pandemic recovery for community colleges; and Ascendium Education Group for student income analyses. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education, nor Ascendium Education.

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. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

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New Research: Fall Undergraduate Enrollment Stabilized In 2022

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New Research: Fall Undergraduate Enrollment Stabilized In 2022

Freshmen up 4.3%, including 6.1% at Community Colleges

HERNDON, VA – (FEBRUARY 2, 2023) – According to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, fall undergraduate enrollment has begun to stabilize in 2022, contracting only by 0.6% or about 94,000 students, compared to fall 2021. However, postsecondary enrollment remains well below pre-pandemic levels, down about 1.23 million undergraduates and 1.11 million total enrollment, both undergraduate and graduate, compared to fall 2019.

Undergraduate enrollment was essentially flat at community colleges (+0.4%, +16,700 students) and private nonprofit four-years (-0.1% or -2,500 students), following the previous year’s declines (-6.7% and -1.6%, respectively). Fall enrollment declines in the public four-year sector were larger, dropping another 1.4%, or 88,000 students. Private for-profit four-year institutions added 29,000 more students or +5.0% from fall 2021.

Meanwhile, graduate enrollment has fared more poorly. Fall graduate enrollment decreased by 39,000 students or 1.2% after two consecutive years of strong growth (+3.0% in 2020; +2.4% in 2021). This suggests that the pandemic-led influxes of post-baccalaureate enrollment has ended.

“It is encouraging to start seeing signs of a recovery in the numbers of new freshmen,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “Although freshmen classes are still well below pre-pandemic levels, especially at Community Colleges, the fact that they are swinging upward in all sectors is a positive indicator for the future.”

In addition, the Fall 2022 Current Term Enrollment Estimates Expanded Edition (CTEE) showed:

Fall freshman enrollment has begun to rise, increasing by about 97,000 (+4.3%) compared to the previous fall. However, freshman enrollment remains down 150,000 compared to 2019.
The Northeast and Midwest undergraduate enrollments declined at about double the national rate, losing 24,000 (-1.1%) and 34,000 (-1.2%) undergraduates, respectively. Enrollment grew slightly in the West and the South (+0.5%, 20,000 students and +0.2%, 8,000 students, respectively).
Male undergraduate enrollments were stable (+0.2%, +15,000 students) while female enrollment continued declines from 2021 (-1.5%, -122,000 students). This extended the trend of improved enrollment patterns for men relative to women first seen in fall 2021.
Latinx and Asian students bucked the slight national decline, with their undergraduate enrollment rising 1.6% and 1.8%, respectively.
Enrollment in health sciences programs declined across all degree levels.
Undergraduate business programs grew from 2021 (+1.2%, +19,000 students) and computer and information sciences gained more than 10% or 54,000 students in fall 2022.
Business, health professions and education—three of the five most popular graduate programs—posted headcount declines in fall 2022.
Computer science graduate program enrollment growth accelerated in fall 2022, increasing by 18.4 percent or 30,000 students. Since fall 2017, graduate Computer sciences programs have increased 74.1% or 82,000 more students.

New in This Expanded Edition:

Race and Ethnicity: the Research Center is now including race and ethnicity breakouts in most national-level analyses.
Institutional Selectivity: For the first time in the CTEE series, viewers can examine changes in undergraduate enrollment and freshman enrollment by institutional selectivity across approximately 1,000 public and private nonprofit four-year institutions.
Primarily Associate Degree Granting Baccalaureate Institutions: Given the increasing number of two-year institutions with an associate degree focus that have begun to offer bachelor’s degree programs, these institutions have been placed in the new category PABs throughout this report.
State Data: In addition to state enrollment by sector, we are now detailing enrollment by major field of study at the state level. Full major field data by state are available in Data Appendices. Also, primarily online institutions that conventionally operate across state lines are now removed from enrollment counts for individual states and are grouped together with other brick-and-mortar multistate institutions.
Dashboard Report: The CTEE report is now presented as a data dashboard, allowing viewers to analyze, visualize, and interact with the longitudinal data quickly. While a PDF report is no longer published, the underlying data for the dashboard and other full details are available in Data Appendices for download as an Excel file.

The CTEE Report Series provides national enrollment estimates by institutional sector, enrollment intensity, age group, gender, major field, and state. See the report’s Methodological Notes for more details, which can be downloaded from the website on the day of release.

The CTEE Expanded Edition report is supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X220022 to Teachers College, Columbia University. This project is part of the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

Lightcast and Clearinghouse Partner to Reveal Student Journeys from the Classroom to the Labor Market

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Lightcast and Clearinghouse Partner to Reveal Student Journeys from the Classroom to the Labor Market

Lightcast’s Alumni Pathways to Utilize Clearinghouse Education Data

BOSTON, MA – (JANUARY 18, 2023) – Lightcast and the National Student Clearinghouse^® announced a new partnership today where Lightcast’s popular Alumni Pathways platform now utilizes Clearinghouse data to provide a comprehensive, one-stop data source for institutions to track student progress from classroom to career, across institutions and employers.

“This partnership is all about advancing opportunities for institutions, systems, and most importantly, students,” said Lightcast CEO Chris Kibarian. “For the first time, by harnessing the millions of data points from Lightcast and the National Student Clearinghouse, educational institutions can better understand student journeys in the labor market and use those insights to support students who are currently enrolled.”

As colleges and universities work to improve and demonstrate their value in an increasingly competitive environment, insight into learner outcomes has never been more important. At the same time, a growing focus on the return on investment of a college education makes it essential to think of “outcomes” not just in terms of completion, but also the career path that follows.

Lightcast’s new partnership with the Clearinghouse represents a breakthrough on both fronts, providing a complete picture of student pathways across enrollment, transfer, completion, and employment while lightening the administrative workload for staff.

“Millions of students and alumni, and thousands of educational institutions use our services each year. The Clearinghouse-Lightcast partnership will reveal more accurate insights to open new opportunities for learners, institutions, and employers,” said Rick Torres, President and CEO of the National Student Clearinghouse. “Our nonprofit organization is entering its 30th year helping education go further with innovative solutions that meet reporting, research, verification, transcript, data exchange, privacy and confidentiality demands across the K-20 to workforce continuum. This initiative will provide institutions with key insights related to an extended view of the impact and result of their learners’ academic journey. Having an accurate picture of a graduates’ postsecondary and employment outcomes can help a school improve those outcomes – but only if they have the right data.”

Making learning-to-work pathways transparent

Alumni Pathways’ integration of Clearinghouse data enables increased processing speed for our clients, while requiring less effort and resources from institutional staff — resulting in a faster, easier way to get the best available data about students’ academic and employment outcomes.

Through Alumni Pathways, educators can now access:

End-to-end insight into the student journey, covering enrollment, transfer, completion, and post-college employment
Program-level reporting on alumni including their industry, job title, and location
Quantitative support to expedite progress towards strategic goals
Data visualization tools for easy analysis

The next evolution in tracking alumni outcomes

In 2016, Lightcast pioneered the use of career outcomes data for higher education by introducing what is now the Alumni Pathways platform. Since then, hundreds of colleges and universities have used the platform to answer critical questions, such as:

What jobs are students getting and where are they working?
Are they working in a field related to their program of study?
How do graduates’ careers progress over time?

Founded in 1993, the National Student Clearinghouse is the only nationwide source of college enrollment and degree data, with participating institutions enrolling 97% of all students in the United States. Clearinghouse data plays a vital role in higher education by helping institutions track transfers and verify degree completion.

By bringing Clearinghouse data into each institution’s Alumni Pathways platform, Lightcast now offers a solution that enables single institutions to better understand their past students’ journeys and use that insight to serve future learners.

To request an interview with a Lightcast senior economist, contact Rachael Wilson at rachael.wilson@lightcast.io or media@lightcast.io. For questions on Alumni Pathways, contact Bob Hieronymus at bob.hieronymus@lightcast.io. Media interested in talking with the Clearinghouse, should contact media@studentclearinghouse.org.

ABOUT LIGHTCAST

Lightcast provides trusted global labor market data, analytics, and expert guidance that empowers learning providers, communities, and corporations to make informed decisions and navigate the increasingly complex world of work. With a database of more than one billion job postings and career profiles, our team provides best-in-class customer service with robust data, clear analysis, and expert guidance on skills, jobs, and opportunities. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and Moscow, Idaho, Lightcast is active in more than 30 countries and has offices in the United Kingdom, Italy, New Zealand, and India. The company is backed by global private equity leader KKR. For more, visit www.lightcast.io.

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. Besides working with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions, the Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni. Education partners throughout the nation trust the National Student Clearinghouse because they know we take our commitment to student privacy very seriously. We focus on serving our customers with high-quality services that they expect from us. The Clearinghouse is scrupulous in its concern for student privacy and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects students’ privacy rights in their education records. For more details, visit studentclearinghouse.org.

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Xello, National Student Clearinghouse Mark Exponential Growth Since Partnering To Streamline College Application Process

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Xello, National Student Clearinghouse Mark Exponential Growth Since Partnering To Streamline College Application Process

K-12 future readiness program and national leader in data exchange services bring free, timesaving efficiencies to students and admissions personnel

HERNDON, VA – (DECEMBER 6, 2022) – Xello, the award-winning K-12 college and career readiness program, and the National Student Clearinghouse, a national leader in educational data exchange and transcript services, have experienced exponential growth since expanding their partnership to include data exchange services, welcoming hundreds of postsecondary institutions into their already robust network of schools.

The Clearinghouse and Xello initially teamed up to provide high schools using Xello insight into graduates’ post-secondary outcomes through the integration of StudentTracker reports, and last year the partnership expanded to offer services that streamline the college application process. Students can now easily exchange data such as transcripts and letters of recommendation to postsecondary schools within the Xello program via National Clearinghouse’s Electronic Transcript Exchange – a secure national exchange software enabling secondary and postsecondary schools, systems, states, and educational organizations to automate the exchange of learner records.

“When evaluating our options for data exchange providers it was important to find one that matched our standards for service and responsiveness. With a long-standing commitment to data integrity and student data privacy, the Clearinghouse was well aligned with our values,” said Matt McQuillen, CEO and Co-Founder of Xello. “As a nonprofit organization, it was also a partner that could offer an affordable pricing model and enabled us to expand our data exchange services without increasing costs to our customers, as schools are continually working to maximize limited budgets.”

The Xello software allows students to easily share transcripts, letters of recommendation and more with prospective postsecondary institutions all within the application, ensuring applicants can meet important and time-sensitive demands during the admissions calendar. Through the dashboard, students can track the progress of their transcript and letters of recommendation requests and know exactly when documents are submitted. They can also see at a glance where they are in their application process and what’s required next, as well as a summary of critical dates by school and deadlines for financial aid applications. Postsecondary institutions can easily import and view student transcripts and letters of recommendation, view the latest requests and track their progress – ultimately saving time for students, educators, and admissions personnel.

The Clearinghouse and Xello will continue to work together to meet the needs of participating and prospective high school and postsecondary networks, identifying opportunities to further improve the user experience to make the college application process less tedious and time consuming for both students and administrators.

“With shared values rooted in student data privacy, integrity, and security, school districts can trust that their student records will be safe and secure, backed by a partnership of long-standing and trusted organizations,” said Rick Torres, President and CEO, National Student Clearinghouse. “By bringing together Xello’s 25 years of experience serving K-12 districts and the Clearinghouse’s nearly 30 years of experience serving the education community, we look forward to leveraging our shared expertise to fuel innovation and to provide clients and end users with a seamless experience.”

For more information on how to become a part of the National Student Clearinghouse’s network of postsecondary school partners, contact the Clearinghouse’s Client Success Team at https://theclearinghouse.help/reps.

About Xello

Xello is an online K-12 college, career and future readiness program that helps students achieve a deeper understanding of themselves, explore pathways, and plan for the future. Using Xello’s discovery-based model, students build knowledge, essential real-world skills, and individual confidence to prepare for the rapidly evolving world of post-secondary academics and career environment. More than 9 million students and educators today leverage Xello tools to transform aspirations into action. To learn more about Xello and its proprietary Work-Based Learning Module, visit: https://www.xello.world.

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. Besides working with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions, the Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni. For more details, visit studentclearinghouse.org.

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