According to the Mitchell Institute, “The National Student Clearinghouse is a college enrollment and degree verification service that maintains records for nearly 3,000 institutions of higher education. More than 90% of college students in the U.S. attend colleges and universities that participate in the service, which makes the Clearinghouse a great resource for high schools looking to track their graduates’ post-secondary enrollment and retention.” NSC data is the only data we currently receive that helps track how many of our students actually go on to post-secondary education, although with the MELMAC grant we will begin a more detailed graduate survey each year.

You are welcome to read through the entire report, which has 43 pages of colorful charts and graphs.  However, if you are looking for some cliff notes, I would direct you to:

Page 2, which shows that between 44%-52% of our graduates have enrolled in some post-secondary education the fall immediately following graduation for the last seven years.  For comparisons sake, the rate in Hancock county over that time was between 53%-58% and between 57%-63% statewide.

Page 12, which shows that about 55% of our graduates have enrolled in in some post-secondary education at any time in the two years following graduation for the last five years.

Pages 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, and 39, which show an overall post-secondary enrollment and progress chart for the classes of 2006-2011.  There is of course limited data for the more recent classes, but if you look on page 29 for the class of 2006, you can see that the path of post-secondary education is quite often not a straight four year trajectory, with drop ins and stop outs.

Page 41, which shows that the overwhelming majority of our students who pursue post-secondary education do so in the greater Bangor area at either EMCC, UMO, or Husson.