Today College Choices for Adults announced that it has released new Learner Progress data. That may leave you asking, what’s that and what does it mean to me as an adult learner?
First, learner progress is a measure of learner retention and learner completion. Learner retention looks at a group of students – a cohort – to see if they are still enrolled or have completed a degree one year after joining the cohort (for most that means one year after enrolling in the institution). That means that what ever percentage is listed, that’s how many students remained enrolled or graduated. Learner completion looks at how many students from a cohort completed a degree within 150% and 200% of ‘normal time.’ ‘Normal time’ is defined by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) as 2 years for an associate degree, 4 years for a baccalaureate degree, 2 years for a masters degree and 4 years for a doctoral degree. The cohort for both of these measures includes part-time and transfer-in students in addition to first-time, full-time students. The only other similar data are NCES IPEDS retention and graduation rate measures currently found on College Navigator, however, these only measure first-time, full-time students.
So, what does this mean for you?
It means that we have provided you a more valid measure for how adult students persist and complete degrees at our partner institutions. Opening our cohort up to include part-time and transfer-in students (those with credit hours from previous college experience), is more inclusive of the typical adult student. Therefore, this measure lets you gauge how learners like you – those going to college part-time while balancing the many demands of adult life – perform at our partner institutions.
Thanks much for compiling this analysis on adult student persistence and completion. It’s a much needed resource!