College Students in the United States

Characteristics, Experiences, and Outcomes

Kristen A. Renn, Robert D. Reason

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642671315
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Student Life

In this book, the authors bring together in one place essential information about college students in the US in the 21st century. Synthesizing existing research and theory, they present an introduction to studying student characteristics, college choice and enrollment patterns, institutional types and environments, student learning, persistence, and outcomes of college.Substantially revised and updated, this new edition addresses contemporary and anticipated student demographics and enrollment patterns, a wide variety of campus environments (such as residential, commuter, online, hybrid), and a range of outcomes including learning, development, and achievement.The book is organized around Alexander Astin's Inputs-Environment-Outputs (I-E-O) framework. Student demographics, college preparation, and enrollment patterns are the "inputs." Transition to college and campus environments are the substance of the "environment." The "outputs" are student development, learning, and retention/persistence/completion.The authors build on this foundation by providing relevant contemporary information and analysis of students, environments, and outcomes. They also provide strategies for readers to project forward in anticipation of higher education trends in a world where understanding "college students in the United States" is an ongoing project. By consolidating foundational and new research and theory on college students, their experiences, and college outcomes in the US, the book provides knowledge to inform policies, programs, curriculum and practice.As a starting point for those who seek a foundational understanding of the diversity of students and institutions in the US, the book includes discussion points, learning activities, and further resources for exploring the topics in each chapter.

PART ONE

INPUTS

1

CHARACTERISTICS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

While it’s still much too early to draw conclusions, initial signs suggest that post-Millennials are on track to become the most well-educated generation yet.

(Fry & Parker, 2018, p. 8)

As we write this chapter, in May 2020, the world is experiencing a pandemic the likes of which has not been seen in our lifetimes. The economy of the United States, and much of the world, has been virtually shut down. Unemployment rates have reached recession-era levels. As we write, heated discussions are occurring about whether to open the economy at the risk of human lives; similarly, heated discussions are occurring about how, or if, to “open” higher education for the fall semester. Higher education institutions never closed, but colleges and universities quickly transitioned from face-to-face instruction to online instruction during the spring semester of 2020. The question for higher education at this point is how to safely deliver instruction, and the college experience, in the coming years.

Projections about student enrollments should always be viewed critically and with much skepticism. Current understanding of who is enrolling in higher education is out of date before it is published; projections are based on previous behaviors along with assumptions about how those behaviors will change over time. The data on which we base the discussion in this chapter was collected before the pandemic of 2020 hit. The pandemic that hit the world in 2020 renders most of the assumptions about student behavior void, or at least tenuous. The reader should engage with the following discussion critically and with the understanding that, as we write, we do not know what the pandemic, the economic crash, and eventual recovery will mean for higher education in the coming years.

We began our original text with a quotation from Debard (2004), who indicated that the then current generation of college students was “the most racially and ethnically diverse in this nation’s history” (p. 33). Even as we move into the next generation of college students—from millennial students to post-millennial students—we can begin with the same idea. The current generation of college students are “on track to be the most diverse, best-educated generation yet,” according to research by the Pew Research Center (Fry & Parker, 2018, p. 3). This is good news for society and for higher education. That said, overall undergraduate enrollment in higher education institutions in the United States is projected to either stagnate or decrease slightly over the next decade (Hussar & Bailey, 2009; Snyder et al., 2019).

In the following sections, we discuss first enrollment trends and projections followed by specific discussions of several social identity groups. We have chosen to present groups of students as distinct, both to simplify presentation and for ease in comprehension. We readily acknowledge the inherent limitations of this approach as well. Current understanding of how students’ various and multiple identity statuses affect their higher education outcomes and experiences reveals that a nuanced understanding of the intersection of various identities is needed (see Torres et al., 2009). Wherever possible in this chapter we highlight intersections of identities, as these intersections affect an understanding of who is coming to higher education, but we strongly encourage the reader to look for these intersections. Although it is true, for example, to say the college-going rates of Latinx students have increased substantially in the last decade, acknowledging that much of this growth is driven by women (Latinas) is both more accurate and nuanced. For those readers who wish to explore more deeply the demographic trends presented here, we draw attention to the list of resources at the end of this chapter.

Trends in Overall Enrollment

The United States has seen growth in the number of students enrolling in higher education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that between 2000 and 2018, the number of students enrolled in higher education increased from 15.3 million to 19.8 million, a 19% increase (Snyder et al., 2019). Undergraduate students made up the vast majority of enrollments: 16.8 million undergraduates were enrolled in 2018. Much of this growth is driven by populations of students who have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education.

Even with this overall increase in enrollment over the first 2 decades of the 21st century, the trend in recent years has been downward. Peak enrollment was in 2010, when approximately 21 million students were enrolled in U.S. higher education (Snyder et al., 2019). Using data provided by NCES, Snyder et al. (2019) provide a complicated and nuanced projection of enrollments over the next decade. Overall student enrollment in higher education is projected to increase, although at a lower rate of increase than in previous decades; Snyder et al. project that overall enrollment in U.S. higher education will increase to 20.4 million students in 2027, even as undergraduate enrollment is expected to plateau or decrease (Hussar et al., 2020).

Not all enrollment projections are as promising, however. Data from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) suggest that overall the annual number of high school graduates in the United States has leveled off after a decade of continued growth and will decline precipitously starting about 2025 (Bransberger & Michelau, 2016). Even though Bransberger and Michelau caution against using the WICHE projections to forecast higher education enrollments, their projections certainly foretell a decline in first-time, first-year enrollments over the next decade.

Nathan Grawe (2018) developed and introduced the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), which accounts for both regional difference in demand and institutional prestige when predicting future enrollment. Grawe predicts that, on average, 4-year institutions will see modest growth between 2020 and 2025, followed by a steep decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education starting after 2025. The HEDI allows Grawe, however, to provide a fine-grained prediction of which institutions are going to be most affected. In particular, Grawe predicts that elite institutions—those ranked in the top 50 institutions nationally—will experience only a modest decline in enrollment, compared to institutions ranked between 51 and 100 and unranked regional institutions, which will see significant declines in enrollment starting in 2025. The brunt of the declines will be felt by institutions in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, with institutions in the Southwest experiencing some potential increase in enrollments.

Grawe (2018) predicts similar declines in enrollments among 2-year institutions. Unlike some 4-year institutions, which draw students from across the nation and world, 2-year institutional students are almost exclusively local or regional, which make these institutions more susceptible to decreases in population and demands for higher education. Whereas elite, 4-year institutions may be able to buttress decreases through recruiting nationally and internationally, 2-year institutions have a smaller geographic area from which to make up decreases in demand. As a result, Grawe (2018) predicts that “the expected rate of contraction in two-year enrollments is almost 20 percent faster than for college enrollment in general” (p. 66).

Undergraduate Enrollment

We turn our focus now to undergraduate student enrollments. Because undergraduate students constitute the vast majority of total postsecondary enrollment, the trends in undergraduate enrollment follow—and dictate—the trends mentioned briefly earlier. Undergraduate student enrollment had been increasing through the first decade of the 21st century (Aud, Hussar, et al., 2010). Between 2000 and 2010, for example, total undergraduate enrollment increased 37.5%, from 13.2 million students in 2000 to 18.1 million students in 2010 (Snyder et al., 2019). By 2018, however, undergraduate enrollment had decreased to 16.6 million students, a decrease of slightly more than 7% (Hussar et al., 2020). Projections through 2027 suggest that undergraduate enrollment will rebound from current numbers to 17 million students, a total still below the 2010 enrollments we reported in the previous volume of this text.

TABLE 1.1
Undergraduate Student Enrollment Trends (in millions) 2000–2018

Year	Total 2-year enrollment	Total 4-year enrollment	4-year, public enrollment	4-year, private (not-for-profit) enrollment
2000	5.9	7.2	4.8	2.2
2010	7.7	10.4	6.5	2.6
2018	5.7	10.8	7.5	2.8

Source: Adapted from National Center for Education Statistics (n.d.).

Changes in overall undergraduate enrollment are not evenly distributed across all sectors of American higher education (see Table 1.1; Aud, Hussar, et al., 2010; Snyder et al., 2019). Two-year institutions saw a 27% increase in enrollment between 2000 and 2010, whereas 4-year institution enrollment increased by 47.2%. Between 2010 and 2018, enrollment at 2-year institutions decreased 25%, whereas 4-year enrollment increased slightly (Hussar et al., 2020). Much of the growth in the 4-year sector is driven by growth in enrollments at public institutions.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity

Enrollment trends related to the racial and ethnic diversity of college students in the United States show an increasing proportion of students of color on college campuses (see Table 1.2). The growth has been driven by both changes in the demographics of the U.S. population, which is becoming much less White, as well as changes in the college-going rates of several racial and ethnic groups, particularly Latinx students (Hussar et al., 2020; Pryor et al., 2007). The distribution of racial groups across the United States is not geographically even, so many of the trends described in this section do not apply to all institutions equally. For example, the Latinx population made up 16.3% of the total U.S. population in 2010 (up from 12.5% in 2000), but approximately 41% of Latinx census respondents reside in the western United States, and only 9% reside in the Midwest (Ennis et al., 2011). Growth in enrollment of Latinx students, therefore, will be greater in institutions in western states.

The percentage of postsecondary students who are White has decreased over the last several decades. In 1976 White students represented 82% of all college students; in 2008 White students made up 63% (Aud, Hussar, et al., 2010). By 2018, White students constituted 52% of undergraduates (Hussar et al., 2020). Whereas the number of White students in higher education was growing even as the proportion of White students was decreasing through 2010, the percentage decrease in White undergraduate students translated into a decrease in the actual number of White students in higher education, from nearly 11 million in 2010 to 8.7 million in 2018.

Compare the decrease in the proportion and number of White students to increases in the representation of students from other racial and ethnic groups and a picture of greater diversity begins to unfold. Between 2000 and 2018, Asian American student enrollment increased by 34%, African American student enrollment increased by 37%, and Latinx student enrollment increased by 148% (Hussar et al., 2020). The increases in representation among Asian American, African American, and Latinx students is likely to continue to increase.

TABLE 1.2
Enrollment by Sex and Race

	2000		2010		2018
	Total enrollment	Percent of enrollment	Total enrollment	Percent of enrollment	Total enrollment	Percent of enrollment	Percent change 2000 to 2018*
Total undergraduates	13,155,393	100.0%	18,082,427	100.0%	16,610,235	100.0%	26.3%
Female	7,377,125	56.1%	10,246,145	56.6%	9,384,236	56.1%	27.2%
Male	5,232,467	43.9%	7,836,282	43.4%	7,225,999	43.8%	38.1%
African American/Black	1,548,893	11.8%	2,677,086	13.9%	2,127,937	12.81%	37.4%
American Indian/Alaska Native	138,506	1.1%	179,091	1.1%	120,165	0.7%	−13.2%
Asian/Pacific Islander	845,545	6.4%	1,087,289	6.8%	1,131,790	6.8%	33.9%
Latinx	1,351,025	10.3%	2,551,000	12.9%	3,352,665	20.2%	148.2%
White	8,983,455	68.3%	10,895,938	63.3%	8,664,500	52.2%	−3.6%
Two or more Races	n/a	n/a	293,700	1.7%	646,500	3.9%	120%

Source : Adapted from Hussar et al. (2020).

American Indian and Alaska Native students are a smaller, and often overlooked, population in U.S. higher education. In 2006 American Indians and Alaska Natives accounted for approximately 1.5% of the total U.S. population, concentrated primarily in the western United States (Aud, Hussar, et al., 2010; DeVoe & Darling-Churchill, 2008). That same year, American Indian and Alaska Native students made up less than 1% of all students in U.S. higher education (DeVoe & Darling-Churchill). In 2018, the proportion of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native remains relatively unchanged at approximately 0.7%: Only 120,000 students out of 16.6 million undergraduate college students in 2018 identified as American Indian or Alaska Native students (Hussar et al., 2020).

Finally, a growing number of college students identify as multiracial (Shang, 2008). Jaschik (2006), citing findings from the 2000 Census—the first year individuals were allowed to check more than one box on the demographic question about race—reported that about 40% of the 6.8 million people who identified as multiracial were under the age of 18. As this younger population has aged, the proportion of college students identify with more than one race has...