State Policies on Student Transitions: Results of a Fifty-State Inventory

A central objective of state policy is to move larger numbers of citizens through the “educational pipeline” to attain a college degree. In part this objective recognizes that the U.S. is losing its historic dominance in the proportion of young adults with a postsecondary credential (OECD, 2007). This report concentrates on four key transitions that directly affect the number of college graduates that a state can generate: The first is the transition from high school to college. The second transition is from pre college to college-level work. The third transition is from two-year to four-year institutions of higher education. The fourth and final transition is from the status of being enrolled in a postsecondary institution to having graduated from one. Sections of the report on each of these topics describe the approaches taken by the fifty states.