INDIANAPOLIS – With only 53% of Hoosier high school graduates in the class of 2020 having pursued education beyond high school, Indiana’s college-going rate experienced its sharpest year-over-year decline and dropped to its lowest point in recent history.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education released data on Thursday that shows the college-going rate of the first high school cohort impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the class of 2020, declined six percentage points from the prior year.
The Commission’s College Readiness Report shows the previously incremental decline in the percentage of students going directly from high school to some form of college – less than one-year certificates up through four-year degrees – accelerated in 2020, likely due to the impact of the pandemic. In the last five years, the total decline is 12 percentage points.
The decline in the college-going rate in 2020-21 equates to about 4,000 fewer high school graduates going to college than the year before. This drop was absorbed almost entirely by Indiana’s public colleges as nearly the same number of Indiana high schoolers went to private or out-of-state colleges as in the previous year. Read the full College Readiness Report at che.in.gov.