FOREWORD

The Center on Education and Training for Employment is pleased to forward this report to the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology (ACCSCT). This is the third report on the performance of the schools and colleges accredited by the Commission. One of the methods the Commission uses to carry out its responsibilities is an annual report from each school or college. The information in this report enables the Commission to monitor operation and performance of these institutions.

The data from the annual reports filed by all the accredited schools and colleges for the 1990 through the 1994 school years formed the basis for the present report. Preliminary analyses had been conducted with the reports for the prior three years. We hope that the results of these analyses can provide guides for future activities of the Accrediting Commission to improve the capacity of the schools and colleges it accredits to serve their students.

This report was prepared by Dr. Morgan Lewis, a Research Scientist with CETE, with the assistance of Mr. Weidong Wang, a former Research Associate of CETE, who performed the many computer runs necessary for the analysis.

Dr. Lewis has asked me to express his appreciation to those who contributed to the preparation of this report. First to the Accrediting Commission which funded the analysis and verification of the annual report data. Second, the staff of the Accrediting Commission, particularly Mr. Bruce Jenks, who has primary responsible for the collection and processing of the annual report data upon which the report is based, and acts as liaison with CETE. Third, the members of the Accrediting Commission, themselves, who contributed many helpful suggestions and insights regarding definitions, analyses, and interpretations of the findings, while allowing Dr. Lewis full control over the final contents of this report.

I should add that while the Accrediting Commission provided the funding for the preparation of this report, its findings and conclusions are those of Dr. Lewis and not necessarily those of the Accrediting Commission, or our Center.

Ray D. Ryan

Executive Director

Center on Education and

Training for Employment

43-818 97-5

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This is the third report of the performance of schools and colleges accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology during the five school years from 1990 through 1994. This report updates a previous report by adding an additional school year of data. The five years of cross-sectional data are based on the total number of students who graduated, withdrew, and obtained employment during the school year. These we refer to as the annual total data.

This report differs from its two predecessors in that it also presents new longitudinal data on program completion and placement in related employment for defined groups of students. These we refer to as the cohort data. Cohort are groups of students who started their programs at points one and one-half times longer than the scheduled length of their programs. The results from students who met the cohort definition during the 1994 school year are presented in this report.

The measures of the performance for both the annual total and cohort data were derived from the information in annual reports filed with the Accrediting Commission. For the annual report data, these measures are graduation, withdrawal, and training-related placement of the schools, calculated separately for full-time and part-time enrollments. Because of students who continue from one school year to another, in the annual total data withdrawal rates are not simply the reverse of graduation rates. For the cohort data, the measures are percentage trained and percentage placed in related employment. The cohort data includes students who withdrew because they obtained related employment in both of these measures.

In the annual total data, almost two-thirds (63 to 65 percent) of the full-time students leaving the accredited schools and colleges graduated. About one-fifth (20 to 22 percent) of the students enrolled each year withdrew without completing their programs. A consistent threefourths of graduates (74 to 78 percent) found employment related to the skills they had studied; this figure is based on graduates who were available for employment. Each year 8 or 9 percent of graduates did not seek employment because they continued their education, entered the military, or had other documented reasons for not seeking jobs.

For part-time students, the graduation and training-related employment rates were 10 to 12 percentage points lower than the rates for full-time students. Withdrawal rates for part-time students were 1 to 2 percentage points higher than the rates for full-time students. The default rates on Stafford loans for the students who had left the schools two years prior to the year analyzed fluctuated around 25 percent.

The cobort data for the 1994 school year yielded outcomes higher than those from the annual total data for all three outcomes. The cohort measure comparable to the graduation rate is percentage trained, and that was 70 percent, 5 percentage points higher than the annual total figure. Part of the reason the cohort figure is higher is that those who withdrew for related employment are included as completing their programs.

The percentage placed in related employment in the cohort data is 82 percent, four points higher than the annual total results. Here again part of the higher figure is due to those who withdrew for related employment.

The biggest difference between the annual total and cohort data is with regard to withdrawal. The annual total data estimated withdrawal at a fairly constant 20 to 22 percent. In the cohort data, the rate in 1994 was 30 percent. We think the higher cohort figure is due to a more careful tracking of those who entered programs in one school year but did not complete their programs that year. They informed their schools that they intended to return the next school year but did not. As a result, they were not counted as withdrawing in either school year. The cohort data, because it is longitudinal, counts these withdrawals more accurately than the crosssectional, annual total data.

Both the annual total and cohort outcome measures were related to 39 measures of the characteristics of the students and the schools, using multiple regression analysis. This analysis determines the net, independent effect of each school characteristic on the outcomes, holding the effect of all the other characteristics constant. The school characteristics listed below were found to have consistent, statistically significant relationships with school performance in both the annual total and cohort data. Most of these relationships, however, were found for full-time enrollments. The outcomes for part-time enrollment have fewer systematic relationships with school characteristics.

■ Percentage of enrollment receiving Pell grants.

This variable reflects the percentage of students from disadvantaged backgrounds served by a school. As the percentage of enrollment receiving Pells increase, graduation/percentage trained rates decline and withdrawal rates increase. The results for the Pell variable are consistent with other findings on the problems of educating students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Results from other studies suggest that schools accredited by the Commission may graduate more students from disadvantaged circumstances than other postsecondary institutions.

Percentage of students classified as Ability to Benefit (ATB).

This variable indicates the percentage of students served by a school who did not complete high school or obtain a General Educational Development certificate. As the percentage of ATB increases, withdrawal and default rates increase. The effect of the percentage of ATB was lower in 1993 and 1994 than in prior years. This may be because the schools and colleges are enrolling fewer ATB students.

Average program length in weeks.

This variable indicates the average length of programs offered by a school. As program length increases, graduation/percentage trained rates decrease and withdrawal rates increase. In 1994, the difference in the graduation rates between the shortest and longest programs was 30 percentage points. As program length increases, however, default rates decrease. It may be that students who complete longer programs earn more money and are better able to pay off their loans. An alternative explanation is that longer programs are more costly and may draw their students from families with more financial resources.

■Main or branch campus.

For four of the five years of annual total data and in the 1994 cohort data graduation/percentage trained rates were higher for schools that report they are the main campuses. We think it is likely that main campuses are likely to have more resources and more experience faculty that contribute to higher quality programs.

Total enrollment.

Graduation rates decrease and withdrawal rates increase as the total enrollment of schools increase. It appears that schools with enrollments over 600 have a more difficult time graduating as many of their students as smaller institutions, when all other factors are held constant.

■Faculty turnover.

Turnover among faculty is associated with lower graduation rates and higher withdrawal rates. Turnover among part-time faculty is related to outcomes more than turnover among full-time faculty. It certainly is harder for teachers to establish supportive relationships with students when there are frequent changes. High turnover may also make it difficult to establish linkage with employers that often results in employment

The cumulative effect of these characteristics can be quite substantial. A main campus school with an enrollment of 600 or less that had few Pell recipients and offered short programs could be expected to have a graduation rate 20 to 30 points higher than a branch campus school with an enrollment over 600, the average percentage of Pell recipients, and long programs. The percentage of Pell grant recipients, ATB students, and faculty turnover may all contribute to problems with retention and graduation. Large enrollments together with high percentages of Pell and ATB students, and high faculty turnover would be an especially worrisome combination, however, such a combination is rarely found in practice.

The analyses in all three reports have identified those characteristics of schools that have a consistent relationship with school performance. The statistical method used to identify these characteristics was multiple regression analysis. This method relates several measures of school operations (inputs) to selected measures of school performance (outcomes). Schools want to graduate their students, i.e., retain them until their programs are completed, and place them in good jobs that are related to the fields in which they were trained. Schools also want students who borrowed money for their tuition to pay back their loans. These desired outcomes led to the four indicators of school performance examined in this study: graduation, withdrawal, trainingrelated placement, and default.

The schools that produce these outcomes differ on many dimensions, such as the size of their enrollments, the prior education of their students, the turnover of faculty, whether they are main or branch campuses, and so on. These characteristics of schools can be considered indicators of the inputs used to produce the desired outcomes. Multiple regression indicates which characteristics of schools have statistically significant relationships with the four outcomes. In the following sections we explain how we defined the measures of school performance and characteristices used in this report.

Measures of School Performance

As noted above, annual reports are submitted to the Accrediting Commission on a school year basis, defined as July 1 through June 30. The information in the reports is verified annually by site visits to a sample of reporting schools. The numbers reported in the various categoriesnew enrollments, continuing students, re-entries, graduation, and withdrawals—are the totals for the year. The cohort information that traces a defined group of students from initial entry until exit, either through graduation or permanent withdrawal, was collected for the first time for the 1994 school year.

For the annual total data, graduation rates, withdrawal rates, and training-related placement rates were calculated for each school by aggregating information provided for each program offered by a school and calculating overall school rates. Separate rates were calculated for full-time and part-time enrollments. The default rates used in the 1990 and 1991 analyses were obtained from reports prepared by the U.S. Department of Education. The rates used in the 1992, 1993, and 1994 analyses were obtained from the annual reports submitted by the schools for those year. It should be noted that these rates are always for the students who left school two years prior to the year in which they are reported.

Outcome Definitions Used with Annual Total Data

Graduation rate. The first of the three reports prepared by the Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE) discussed how we tested various ways of calculating graduation rates and selected the method we used. The primary problem in defining graduation, lies with how to deal with continuing students, those who neither graduate nor withdraw in a given school year. This is the definition we decided to use:

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