The headline is perhaps a bit misleading. Graduation rates are much higher among “traditional” students (under 20 when they first enroll) who attend public or private non-profit 4-year institutions full time. Among this group, graduation rates remained high—essentially unchanged—during the recession. Graduation rates are abysmally low at for-profit private institutions and got even worse during the recession. Graduation rates are also very low among students who attend college part-time (not a surprise), among older “non-traditional” students, and among students who start at 2-year community colleges (unfortunate, but true). It was in these latter categories—for-profit colleges, part-timers, older students, and community colleges—that enrollment surged during the recession, and that in itself drove most of the decline in the overall graduation rate, because the overall student pool was weighted more heavily toward the types of students who are least likely to graduate.
I’m glad to see the Department of Education beginning to crack down on for-profit colleges. Many of them are nothing more than scams, ripping off the gullible students who attend and end up saddled with a mountain of student loan debt and either no degree or a next-to-worthless degree. At the same time, these schools are ripping off taxpayers by sucking up Pell grants and federal student loans that will never be repaid, while failing to deliver the goods in educational payoffs.