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Weird Utah Statistics Part 3
Here's another batch of statistics about Utah I can't quite get my head around. The graph shows the percentage of ninth-graders from every state who either a) don't graduate from high school, b) graduate but don't attend college, c) attend some college but don't graduate, or d) graduate from college with a two or four year degree.
Utah has one of the lowest high school dropout rate (only 17%), but by far the highest rate of students who graduate from high school but don't attend college in the country (47%). I can't figure out why it would be that way... Utah, of course, has a large number of guys who serve missions and thus don't complete a degree within the designated time period (one of the reasons BYU always scores abnormally low on NCAA student-athlete graduation rates), plus girls who attend college but then get married and don't finish, but both of these groups should count in the 'attended college but didn't finish within the time period' category, in which the Utah rate is fairly small.
Hmmm...am I missing something? Are there really that many people who never attend college in Utah? Am I biased living in the SLC/Provo area where college attendance at least in part is a given? Do guys and girls in the rural areas of Utah rarely attend college at all, thus affecting Utah's rates as a whole? I really have no idea why this would be the case. None of you probably know either, I'm just wondering out loud...
April 14, 2004 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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If you look at Table 1 (the Education Pipeline Success Rate), you will see a column labeled "Percentage Immediately Entering College" (the key word being "Immediately"). It has a value of 36 for Utah. Add that to the 17 percent HS dropouts and you get 53 percent. The remaining 47 percent neither dropped out nor entered college immediately. All HS grads who wait until after their mission to start college fall into this category. (Note also that Idaho is pretty high in the same category).
Posted by: Last_lemming | Apr 20, 2004 10:13:35 AM
These statistics make me wonder. . .where do they come from and how do they know?
For example, I was born in, grew up in, and graduated from high school in California. Right after high school I started college at BYU in Utah. Whose statistics did I end up falling under, California's or Utah's, or neither? Did I essentially fall off the scope for California's statistics because I went to college out of state? If so, it would seem that most states would have a good sized percentage of students do this, and it would likely throw off their statistics quite a bit.
Posted by: Thom | Apr 20, 2004 11:58:56 AM
Good eye, "Last_lemming"! I totally missed the 'immediately' part...
Posted by: The Baron | Apr 20, 2004 12:50:16 PM
