Lower Percentage Of College Students Are Graduating

From The Wall Street Journal, "College Graduation Rate Shrinks, Study Finds: Research shows just 52.9% of students who began four-year programs in fall 2009 had graduated" by Melissa Korn:

Just 52.9% of students who began four-year programs in fall 2009 had graduated from such institutions within six years, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, compared with 55% for the class that started in 2008 and 56.1% the year before that.***But students of all ages, and at all types of institutions, completed school at a lower rate than those who started down the college path the prior year.***Though a smaller percentage of students made it to the finish line this year, the total number of graduates increased by about 71,000 for the latest class, since more students—2.9 million—entered college in 2009 than in the prior year.