Nces Report Nontraditional Students the Term Paper

Total Length: 920 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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I did not find specific study, but rather read a 2006 report by Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that clearly addressed the problems with NCES's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which is the principal source of annual data at the level of individual postsecondary institutions regarding a number of variables that include characteristics of students, staff, finance, student aid, and graduation rates. Despite its size, IPEDS is limited and cannot answer many questions needed to be answered. Surprisingly, current data simply does not allow NCES "to estimate graduation rates for the vast majority of students" (Schneider, 2006), because the units of analysis are institutions of higher education that report data on an aggregate basis. IPEDS data are limited to full-time, first-time degree- or certificate-seeking students in a particular year (cohort), by race/ethnicity and gender. Thus, no data are available on time to degree for individual students, family income, students who transfer and graduate from a subsequent institution, those enrolling on a part-time basis, and students who start - "stop out" - restart. Schneider asks, "How do you measure quality or design accountability systems for institutions that serve an appreciable number of non-traditional students with data that ignore these students?" A 1958 book by John Brubacher and Rudy Willis, reported on by the Teachers College Record, a journal of educational research, analysis, and commentary published since 1900 by the Teachers College at Columbia University (TC Record website), found that data on education as a whole by the government and educators/researchers "remains a relatively unexplored frontier.

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Into its regions, where lies a mass of unorganized data concerning higher education..." only a few researchers have ventured. It appears that this land still remains uncharted.

Schneider raises a very relevant question. With such a large number of nontraditional students, and especially the number of the students who drop out of college, it is necessary to determine how many go to another college or get a degree through distance learning. It is also important to know why these individuals are leaving and what can be done to help them continue their education. This report leaves the reader with many more questions than what was answered......

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"Nces Report Nontraditional Students The", 16 June 2007, Accessed.4 July. 2025,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/nces-report-nontraditional-students-37173