A new federal report presents a wealth of data about how 2002’s 10th graders fared in higher education (and not) a decade later — potentially offering researchers and policy makers enormous insight into who attains postsecondary success and why.
The report offers a first look at new data from one of the U.S. Education Department’s most important longitudinal research studies, the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, which followed 10th graders through to the 2012-13 academic year. Eighty-four percent of those high school sophomores went on to at least some postsecondary education within that decade, while 16 percent did not, with those variations differing, somewhat predictably, for certain demographic traits (women were more likely to go on than men, students from wealthier socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely than their peers, etc.).
