Alliance for Excellent Education

Only about 6 out of every 100 ninth graders who walk in the door of a Chicago public high school will earn a 4-year college degree by the time they are in their mid-20’s, according to a new report from the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. The report, which tracks the graduating classes of 1998, 1999, 2002, and 2003, is the first in the country to follow individual graduates of a major urban school system and to evaluate what kind of colleges they attend and how many persevere until graduation.

The report, From High School to the Future, also finds that the educational aspirations of Chicago’s high school students have risen over the last decade, but the gap between student aspirations and actual college enrollment and degree attainment remains large. Although nearly 80% of high school seniors in Chicago public schools said that they expected to graduate from a 4-year college, only about one third enrolled in a 4-year college within a year of high school graduation, and only about 35% of those who enrolled in college received a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. (Keep in mind that this report only considers high school graduates. According to the Manhattan Institute report covered earlier, the graduation rate for students in the class of 2003 who hailed from Chicago was 50%. Any student who drops out of high school is not reflected in the report’s calculations.)