RICHMOND – Virginia prepares its students well for college, but 12 percent don’t graduate from high school and less than one third of the state’s college-age residents are pursuing postsecondary education, according to a report released Wednesday.
“The top states are graduating 94 percent” of their high school students, while Virginia’s figure is 88 percent, said Jenny Delaney, a research associate with the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which released the report.
The statistics are part of “Measuring Up 2004,” a biennial report card on postsecondary education.
The report shows that 30 percent of Virginians between ages 18 and 24 are enrolled in college, down from 31 percent a decade ago. In the states that ranked high on this measure, 40 percent are enrolled in college, Delaney said.
Thirty-nine percent of Virginia’s ninth graders go on to college within four years, compared to 52 percent in top-ranked states, according to the report.
Also, gaps in college enrollment rates between Virginia’s white and non-white students, and between students from affluent and poor backgrounds, have widened over the past decade, according to the nonpartisan group based in San Jose, Calif.
Among adults ages 18 to 24, 25 percent of non-white Virginians were enrolled in college in 2004, compared to 33 percent a decade ago. College-age Virginians from families with the highest annual income ($133,200 or higher) are twice as likely as those from the lowest-income families ($14,190 a year or less) to attend college.
Virginia’s results remain mediocre despite improvements over the decade in 8th-graders’ performance on national assessments in reading and math and 11th and 12th-graders proficiency on Advanced Placement tests.
“They’re better prepared, but we haven’t necessarily seen them going on to higher education,” said Delaney, who acknowledged that the study doesn’t measure how the factors affect each other, but speculated that “the price of college has to be related to the number of kids that enroll in college.”
The report noted that over the past decade, families in Virginia and the rest of the nation are finding it tougher to pay for college. Those from the combined lowest- and lower-middle income brackets, for example, must spend an average of 39 percent of their annual income to attend a public four-year college.
Virginia has managed to keep community college affordable, but the high costs of attending four-year schools could keep young people from pursuing higher education, the report said.
The state has allocated more money into need-based financial aid since 1994, “but this investment remains very low relative to other states,” the report said.
David W. Breneman, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, said that sharp tuition increases over the last two or three years at public institutions nationwide came as a result of decreased state support. “There’s no question we’ve pushed more of the costs on families,” he said.
He added that space is also a factor.
“It’s probably a combination of affordability and to some degree there are some capacity issues,” Breneman said. “Virginia is one of the states dealing with this echo boom” – baby boomers’ children heading to college.
“Kids that would have been a slam dunk and gotten into James Madison (University) five years ago are ultimately being bumped down to two-year schools. Some of those who’d go to two-year colleges won’t go,” he said.
The Warner administration says it has been working to address the issues outlined in the report.
After two years of steep cuts, Gov. Mark R. Warner this year led a budget battle that resulted in the General Assembly allocating $262 million in new funding that will help cover rising tuition and operational costs, support growing enrollment and add courses.
The new money also funds faculty raises of 3 percent and boosts need-based financial aid at public colleges and tuition-assistance grants at private institutions.
“While tuition did go up to offset the severe general fund reductions in 2002 and 2003, we expect tuition increases to moderate going forward,” Warner spokesman Kevin Hall said. “And, as tuition has increased, Virginia has continued to put money into need-based financial aid programs.”