Chicago college enrollment rate affecting Chicago jobs

Posted on September 30, 2018

The enrollment rate for colleges is increasing, which will impact Chicago jobs.

More students are enrolling in college than ever before, with 64.6 percent of the Class of 2017 graduates enrolling in a two-year or four-year college – a 20 percent increase from 2010 when the college enrollment rate was 53.7 percent. This is the highest year-over-year improvement since 2010, with an increase of 4.8 percentage points from 2016 when 59.8 percent of CPS graduates enrolled in college. The district also reached a near record high college persistence rate of 72.3 – signaling that more students are enrolling and staying in college.

“Chicago students are raising the bar for success, and making our city proud,” said Mayor Emanuel. “The highest-ever college enrollment means more students are using high school graduation as a milestone on the way to accomplish great things after they earn their diploma.”

“CPS continues to be a national leader in urban education as more of our graduates than ever before are enrolling in college,” said CPS CEO Dr. Janice K. Jackson. “From ensuring students have meaningful planning conversations through Learn.Plan.Succeed. to our robust partnerships and efforts to address summer melt, our underlying mission is clear: high school graduation is not the end goal. We are working to ensure our students have the skills to thrive after graduation, and today’s announcement shows that parents, students, and educators are united behind that mission.”

“These results suggest Chicago students recognize that City Colleges is a smart college choice that offers a quality, relevant, affordable college education with a direct path to four-year universities and careers in growing fields,” said Chancellor Salgado. “These outcomes are also a testament to our work with CPS – from the Star Scholarship to dual enrollment to our post-secondary navigators and more – that is supporting Chicago students in accessing and succeeding in college.”

As the percentage of students attending college is increasing, the raw number of students enrolling in college is also rising, with 14,864 students enrolling in college in 2017 – an increase of more than a thousand from the previous year. The district’s growing college enrollment rate mirrors the increasing number of CPS students who are earning high school diplomas.