National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)¶
Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 6 claims (4 for, 2 against) · 2 studies (2 associational),q2· 0 of 2 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study
Description¶
National Student Clearinghouse data are a nonprofit repository of postsecondary enrollment, completion, and related records voluntarily contributed by participating institutions and used for education research and reporting.
Components¶
- National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data as a source for two-year college outcomes: NSC is a nonprofit central repository for college enrollment and completion data, with institutions serving 97 percent of college students voluntarily sharing enrollment data. The article describes its strengths as consistent, comprehensive, and national in coverage, including out-of-state and private institutions. Its limitations include limited program information, incomplete certificate and degree information, missing colleges and students, and possible matching errors, since "Colleges that provide records to NSC may opt to not share records for non-degree seeking students." (Jenny Nagaoka et al. (2020))
- National Student Clearinghouse first-year persistence and retention snapshot report and downloadable data tables: A National Student Clearinghouse snapshot report series tracking first-year persistence (continued enrollment at any institution) and retention (continued enrollment at the starting institution) for fall entering cohorts, with data current through fall 2016. The report defines its measures and cohort-selection rules and states that "Data tables for this snapshot may be downloaded from the NSC Research Center website" as an Excel file. It is sponsored in part by the Lumina Foundation. (First-Year Persistence et al. (2017))
Claims¶
- NSC data cannot be used alone to calculate two-year credential-type completion rates because 57.5 percent of completion records have a blank credential name field [-W]
- Full-time immediate two-year enrollment rates differ substantially between ICCB and NSC data, suggesting limited reliability of the NSC full-time status field [-W]
- NSC and ICCB data agree on any-credential completion within four years for 96 percent of immediate two-year enrollees [+W]
- NSC and ICCB data agree on immediate two-year college enrollment for about 96 percent of students, with ICCB showing a slightly higher enrollment rate [+W]
- Of students who started college in fall 2015, 73.4 percent persisted at any U.S. institution and 61.1 percent were retained at their starting institution in fall 2016 [+M]
- On average, the overall persistence rate is about 13 percentage points higher than the retention rate, meaning nearly one in eight starting students transfer by the following fall [+M]
Related Products and Programmes¶
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Key Sources¶
- Jenny Nagaoka and Shelby Mahaffie. (2020). Tracking Two-Year College Outcomes: Comparing National Student Clearinghouse and Illinois Community College Board as Sources of Two-Year College Data. Technical Paper, University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/tracking-two-year-college-outcomes
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
product |
id |
national-student-clearinghouse-nsc |
title |
National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) |
description |
National Student Clearinghouse data are a nonprofit repository of postsecondary enrollment, completion, and related records voluntarily contributed by participating institutions and used for education research and reporting. |
status |
review |
moved_from |
element/nsc-two-year-college-data-element |
product_kind |
dataset |
generated |
by process:sweep-kinds on 2026-10-10 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — jenny-nagaoka-and-shelby-mahaffie-2020 |
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