College Enrollment Rate Declining For Recent High School Graduates

Posted by Milton Recht:

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Smaller Share of High School Grads Going to College" by Neil Shah:

The college enrollment rate — the share of recent U.S. high-school graduates enrolling in college or a university in the same year — dropped in 2012 to 66.2%, the lowest level since 2006, the Labor Department said in a report on Wednesday. For 2012 graduates, the rate dropped for both men and women, to 61.3% from 64.6% in 2011, and 71.3% from 72.3%, respectively.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

***There were other gloomy signals in the government’s latest report. The share of recent black American high-school graduates enrolling in college dropped precipitously to 58.2% from 67.5% in October 2011 — a much bigger drop than for whites, Asians and Hispanics. Last October—when the Labor Department gathered its data — the unemployment rate for high-school grads who didn’t enroll in school was 34.4%, up from 33.6% a year earlier.