New York Can Count College Students. It Cannot Say How Many Got There Without

New York Can Count College Students. It Cannot Say How Many Got There Without Regents Courses.

About 3.7 million students graduate from American high schools each year. Roughly 2 million reportedly go directly to college. Another source puts immediate postsecondary enrollment at 62.8 percent.

The estimates differ, likely because the definitions, years or enrollment windows differ. But the scale is clear.

Now ask New York a smaller question.

How many students enter college each year without taking a Regents course?

The answer should fit in one cell.

The available public sources do not provide it.

That is strange. New York maintains secondary-school records. Colleges receive transcripts. The federal government tracks enrollment. The National Student Clearinghouse follows persistence, transfers, stop-outs, re-entry and completion.

We can follow students through nearly every door in the system.

Then we ask what courses they took before entering college, and the files stop talking.

Part of the problem is definition.

Does “students who go to college” mean recent New York public-school graduates who immediately enroll? Everyone entering a New York college? Adults, transfer students and equivalency-route entrants?

An out-of-state freshman may have taken no Regents courses because another state did not offer them. Private-school and homeschooled students may have followed different curricula. Adult learners may not have conventional New York course histories.

“Regents courses” also cannot be casually replaced with Regents examinations or diploma type.

A student might complete a Regents-aligned course without taking its examination. Another might take the exam and fail. A student without a Regents diploma cannot automatically be counted as someone who took no Regents courses.

Use the wrong substitute, and New York could publish a precise answer to a different question.

The number may already exist in pieces.

CUNY and SUNY identify first-time freshmen and receive academic records. NYSED may hold the course histories needed to establish Regents participation. The National Student Clearinghouse provides the postsecondary side of the bridge.

What is missing publicly is the join.

Match a clearly defined cohort’s high-school course records with college enrollment data. Count first-time college entrants. Then identify those without a verified Regents course.

The calculation is straightforward once the population is defined.

No such aggregate table was identified.

National databases cannot repair this gap. NCES tracks enrollment across broad demographic and institutional categories. College Scorecard reports enrollment, completion, debt and earnings. The Clearinghouse follows students between institutions and across time.

None identifies Regents-course history.

The headcount is only the beginning. Connected records could also show first-year credits, placement, retention and completion. That would let New York examine whether different secondary pathways correspond with different college outcomes.

Perhaps the differences are substantial. Perhaps they disappear after accounting for age, school sector and institution.

Right now, the public cannot tell.

America counts college students by the million. New York counts Regents results down to the examination. Colleges inspect transcripts one applicant at a time.

Yet nobody appears to publish the number crossing between those systems without taking Regents courses.

Until the records are joined and the cohort is defined, any confident answer is not a statistic.

It is a guess wearing office clothes.

The full piece is at michaelvanacore.com.