Research

6 Results

July 8, 2025

Trends in Median Family Income: 1998-2019

Insight. Colleges and universities set tuition price based in part upon assumptions regarding trends in family income. Current family income is the primary driver of the calculation of student financial need, which in turn drives financial aid strategy, an integral part of the pricing equation. While each institution has its particular distribution of students by […]

Affordability

July 8, 2025

Comparing Key Enrollment Metrics by Institutional Market Position

Insight. Institutions vary considerably in the patterns they experience in discount rates, yield rates and enrollment demand. Those patterns and trends vary to significant degrees by empirically-defined institutional market position. Assessing or benchmarking such metrics should begin with appropriate comparisons to similarly positioned colleges and universities. Private Non-Profit Freshmen Yield, Discount and Ratio of Applications […]

Enrollment Growth
Strategy

July 8, 2025

Putting Retention & Completion Rates into Comparative Context

Insight. While it may be difficult to predict with accuracy the likelihood of any given student actually graduating from an institution, that institution’s graduation rate is among the most predictable of metrics given its strong correlation with other institutional attributes. Using predicted retention and completion rates to evaluate institutional outcomes is prerequisite to setting appropriate […]

Outcomes
Retention

June 21, 2025

Parental Educational Attainment by Race/Ethnicity

Insight. Many projections of the demographic forecasts underlying colleges’ enrollment planning include trend lines in the changing racial/ethnic mix of the population nationally or regionally. But a primary determinant of college-attendance rates is parental educational level, and educational attainment rates vary significantly by race/ethnic segments of college-age students. Enrollment projections and forecasts need to be […]

Enrollment Growth

April 20, 2025

First-Year Performance and Retention/Completion Rates

Insight. Retention and graduation rates are powerfully dependent upon students’ first-year academic performance, a fact often overlooked when looking only at persistence rates (the percent of students returning for the second year) rather than rates of performance and progress (making one year’s progress toward degree completion in terms of grades and credits earned). Performance, Retention […]

Retention
Student Success

April 20, 2025

FAFSA Applications Have Plummeted in 2024

FAFSA Tracker For college enrollment leaders, the FAFSA application cycle has become anything but normal. The year 2025 brings new challenges, with comparisons to the problematic 2024 rollout and the historic 2023 processes. This uncertainty creates anxiety for aid and enrollment managers as they strive to achieve their enrollment goals. HCRC continues to support colleges […]

Affordability
Enrollment Growth

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