Delayed Bachelor’s Degree Graduates Have Lower Graduate School Enrollment Rates

Abstract

Using nationally representative data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond surveys, I establish a new descriptive finding: Students who take longer than four years to complete their bachelor’s degree have significantly lower graduate school enrollment rates compared with students who complete their bachelor’s degree in four years, which is the standard for “on-time” graduation. Importantly, I show that students with a different time to degree report having similar expectations for earning a graduate degree in the future when asked during their final year of their bachelor’s degree, suggesting that differential graduate school goals do not explain the enrollment gaps. Additional analyses find that these enrollment patterns are driven entirely by differences in full-time enrollment in graduate programs within the first year after completing the bachelor’s degree. Delayed graduates are not more or less likely to enroll in part-time graduate degree programs or to initially enroll between one and ten years after completing their bachelor’s degree.