I was having a conversation with a friend today about college and how many different paths students today are taking on their way to a bachelor’s degree. In particular, we were wondering about the current average age at graduation for all degree-seeking students at 4 year non-profit schools and to my surprise, I can’t find any statistics to show this.
It’s entirely possible that my research skills are not great, but a google search and a yahoo search pulled up nothing but irrelevant junk but I can’t believe that the government doesn’t keep statistics tracking the average age at graduation.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might find this information? What started as an idle discussion is now a serious question and I have to believe the answer is out there somewhere.
That’s true but what about all the kids who take a gap year or join the military? I understand a great many cannot afford to attend every semester because they need to earn money to help pay for school or are working in coop programs and those circumstances can stretch undergraduate attendance farther than 6 years.
I realize that we pay practically no attention to these types of students on CC but I suspect they represent a significant percentage of the total number of students attending 4 year colleges and universities and I am looking for hard data that takes all colleges students into account, not just the kids of most CC parents. I still can’t believe that data doesn’t exist although I can’t seem to find it.
I would believe it changes by school and the type of students it serves.
Example, I would assume the average age of a graduating student at BYU would be 23, due to the large number of students who complete the 2 year mission as a Mormon. The top 20 universities are probably closer to 22.
A university that caters itself to the adult learner would have students who finish at a later age.
It’s hard to get that number. The following numbers were what I could come up with after some Googling around.
In 1960, the median age at graduation with a bachelor’s degree was 23 – according to a study published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in November 1963.
In 2011, in a study published in the Monthly Labor Review in February 2013, of those age 20-29 who had completed a bachelor’s degree, about 8% were age 20-21, 60% age 22-23, 18% age 24-25, 10% age 26-27, 3% 28-29. (These percentages are approximate b/c I’m reading off a somewhat fuzzy barchart in that study. Also note, by definition the data excluded from the denominator anybody under age 20 or over age 29.
Having that number doesn’t tell you why the average is what it is. Districts have different cut-offs for kindie enrollment, parents delay entry for their kids leading to older high school graduates, kids skip grades, kids take gap years, kids go to impacted universities where it’s near impossible to graduate in 4 years, kids have to take time off to raise more money, kids transfer which can cause delays, adults go BACK to school.
It’ll vary between colleges too. Public universities, on average, can take longer to graduate from. I would expect their average age of graduation to be higher. They get more older commuters returning to school. They get more transfers from the local community college programs (and some of those programs can take 3 years to finish GE’s for even the most diligent student.) Smaller private universities tend to have higher 4-year graduation rates, can have less transfers and a higher percentage of kids start right after high school graduation or within a year or 2. I think the best you are going to get is digging this info out of the individual schools that interest you. That’ll give you a better picture of that particular school.
If 6 years is the average graduation rate then you know the average age is at least over 24. If you google you can find long lists of schools where large percentages (more than 50 percent even) are 25 and over.
The average age for graduation is meaningless. My son will be 21 and he is graduating in 4 years with a BS in computer engineering for a well known Midwest university. That’s the only number that matters to me and him. He didn’t take any gap-years to find himself, he didn’t do any studies aboard – “vacation time”, and he got his behind out of bed in the freezing winter mornings to take those 8AM classes instead of the more desirable 11AM classes. I realize that graduating in 4 years maybe very difficult for many kids who have to work to put themselves thru school, and I really applaud them for all their effort, but 6 years to graduate is ridiculous.
@PeterW, kids who do gap years between high school and college usually aren’t doing it to “find themselves” but to either work to save money for college, or to mature a little more so they don’t waste their parents or their own hard-earned money once they do start college. Good study abroad programs count towards your degree, so there’s no reason why doing one would delay graduation. And at some large universities, people take longer to graduate not because they are too lazy to drag their behinds out of bed, but because the classes they need to fulfill the requirements of their major are too full, so they have to wait another semester to get in.
A friend’s son trained as an EMT and is currently working as one during his gap year before he starts at Harvard. He now knows he wants to be a doctor, something he discovered while working as an EMT. He’ll graduate a year later than his peers who started college right away, but so what?
My daughter will study at a university in France next year. She’s still on track to graduate in 4 years.
Another kid I know now has an extra semester to do because he wasn’t able to get into one of the prerequisite classes for his major, due to budget cuts at his state university. Don’t assume that because someone takes longer to graduate than your son did is due to their laziness or immaturity.
I agree @Massmomm There are lots of valid reasons to take longer to finish school.
D’s university more than 80 percent graduate in 4 years despite about 60 percent study abroad during their time there. Study abroad isn’t a “vacation.” They have to apply and be accepted into a program within their major in most cases. Many schools won’t even LET you study abroad if you aren’t t on target to graduate in 4 years.
Our state’s public schools are seriously compacted. Most tell you up front to expect at least 1 or 2 more quarters/semesters just because of how difficult it is to get classes… even the 8 am classes. We know lots of stellar students that went into their 5th year because it took 9 semesters to finally get into a math class they (and everyone else) needed. Is it ridiculous? Absolutely! It’s ridiculous that the schools can’t adequately accommodate their paying customers.
My kids are on track to graduate at 21 but they have a lot of advantages. Do we know kids who languish and wander in college? Yep, we don’t see them actually graduate at all because they were coerced into attending in the first place. I’d not assume the kid who takes 6 years is lazy… I’d assume they have greater responsibilities and perhaps not fortunate enough to be in a school where everyone gets what they need in a realistic time table.