The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center publishes an annual Undergraduate Degree Earners report series which provides demographic and educational profile data for all students graduating with an undergraduate degree. These undergraduate degrees may include associate and bachelor’s degrees and certificates. For this report, graduates in the 2019-20 academic year were profiled with a focus on first-time versus non-first-time graduates, and changes in demographics and education credentials received over the last eight academic years, sense 2012-13. Highlights of this report can be found below:
- The upward trend in the total number of undergraduate graduates stalled in 2020 at 3.7 million. This is due to a decline in first-time graduates.
- The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated contrasts between first-time and non-first-time graduates. Much of the decline in overall first-time graduates can be explained by associate degree and certificate earners. Declines among first-time associate degree and certificate earners fell 3.9 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively.
- First-time certificate earners fell almost 20 percent within just a few months after campus shut-downs, compared to a 1.5 percent growth between April and June 2019.
- In contrast, first-time bachelor’s degree earners increased 1.9 percent in 2019-20, nearly 28,000 more graduates over the previous year, continuing a steady growth trend.
- First-time bachelor’s degree earners increased only among traditional-aged students, the number of traditional-aged bachelor’s degree recipients increased 2.9 percent, or by 35,000 students. The number of bachelor’s degrees earned by their older counterparts (aged 25+) declined (-2.8%). Due to this, overall traditional-aged first-time graduates increased half a percent from the previous year further widening the gap from adult students.
- Graduates with prior awards grew by nearly 170,000 students which far outnumbered the number of first-time graduates who only increased by 53,000 students over this period.
