Transition to Higher Education

Ensuring that students graduate from high school on time (i.e., within 4 years) and are ready for college or the labor market has been an important goal of high school education in the United States for decades.35 Increasingly, skills learned in high school do not guarantee access to jobs that support families, because most of the fastest-growing, wellpaying jobs in today's labor market require at least some postsecondary education (Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl 2010). About a quarter of U.S. public school students do not graduate from high school with a regular diploma within the expected period of 4 years (Chapman et al. 2011). Among those who do graduate from high school, many go to college or combine school with work, but some enter the labor market without pursuing additional education, at least in the short term (Ingels et al. 2012).

This section updates several indicators related to U.S. students' transitions from high school to college, including on-time high school graduation rates, long-term trends in immediate college enrollment after high school, the high school graduation and postsecondary entry rates of U.S. students relative to those of students in other countries, and remediation rates among students entering postsecondary institutions across the United States. Together, these indicators present a broad picture of the transition of U.S. students from high school to postsecondary education, the topic of chapter 2.