The On-Track College Progress report shows how long it takes Michigan public high school graduates to earn 24 credits in college.
In the Common College Metrics report, the National Governor’s Association suggests students earning 24 credits within the first academic year demonstrates progress. Therefore, 24 credits is considered one year’s worth of college credit.
In general, full-time students can earn about 12 credits per semester, or 24 in a year. How quickly they accumulate the credits needed for a degree can be an indicator of preparedness for college. Preparedness could mean academic readiness, but could also include factors like financial and social readiness and personal goals.
Total counts and percentages are included in the report, and trend data are available since the 2007-08 high school year.
The report is updated in early spring. See the Recently Posted Reports page for when the report was last updated.
Historical Changes
- Fall 2012: The 24 College Credits report was first posted.
- October 2013: CEPI refined how enrollments are calculated to more closely align with other postsecondary MI School Data reports.
- Fall 2014: Rules were refined to include credits earned while a student was dual-enrolled. (For example: before the fall 2014 update, college credit earned by students who were still attending high school would not be counted.) Because of this, if you generated a report before fall 2014, it may not match reports generated after.
- Summer 2020: Report name was changed from 24 Credits to On-Track College Progress.
- Beginning with the 2018-19 school year, independent colleges with TIP or PELL grant recipients began reporting in the STARR Collection. Because of this change, independent colleges may be more frequently represented in the data than in prior years, which may result in trend changes.
- NSC data are used to locate data for out-of-state or non-STARR participating schools. Prior to the 2018-19 school year, NSC data were also used to fully supplement colleges participating in the STARR collection. Beginning with 2018-19, NSC data are used to supplement Michigan STARR reporting schools only if student data are present for an institution in an academic year where no STARR data are present at the same institution for that student.
- Rule changes and data revisions received over time can cause isolated scenarios where student enrollment counts or percents appear to decrease over time, when cumulative increases would be the expectation.
Use the Location and Report Settings to select a location, high school graduation year, college type, time to complete 24 credits (all years or within 12 months) and report category. Data can be filtered by categories such as race/ethnicity, gender, race/ethnicity by gender, economically disadvantaged, English learners, homeless, migrant, and students with disabilities.
Data can be viewed as a count or percentage. Other data view options include:
- Snapshot (a graph and table of the selected data)
- Trend (a graph and table showing changes over time)
- Entity Breakdown (a table shows the data for the selected entity and related entities; if you’ve selected a particular district, the Entity Breakdown would show data for that district, ISD and individual buildings within the district)
The data are grouped into the following date ranges:
- 0-6 months
- 0-12 months
- 0-16 months
- 0-24 months
- 0-36 months
- 0-48 months
If a date range isn’t available, it’s probably because it hasn’t been long enough since the graduation year. For example, 0-48 month data will not show up for the 2019 graduation year until after 48 months have elapsed, in 2023.
See the MI School Data Quick Start Guide for the basics of navigating the site and customizing a report.
Location Options
Locations Setting options: Statewide, ISD, District and School
Logged-in Users
Users with secure access who are logged in can see unsuppressed numbers for the entities for which they have been specifically authorized.
CEPI and the National Student Clearinghouse collected the data used to complete this report. The databases used include:
- CEPI’s Michigan Student Data System, to locate the student's high school building, district and intermediate school district as well as high school graduation year and demographics. For details on the data definitions and how the data is collected, refer to the MSDS Collection Details Manual.
- CEPI’s Student Transcript and Academic Record Repository, a collection in MSDS, to locate IHE enrollment in a Michigan public community college or university. For details on the data definitions and how the data are collected, refer to the STARR Data Collection Manual.
- The NSC StudentTracker database to locate enrollment from out-of-state or non-STARR participating colleges or universities.
The On-Track College Progress report includes only Michigan public high school graduates earning at least 24 college credits at any IHE that reports to either STARR or the NSC StudentTracker.
Because NSC StudentTracker does not provide credits in its report, Michigan uses the federal-approved formula that considers any students who meet any of the following criteria as having one year of college credit:
- Enrolled full-time for 28 weeks
- Enrolled half-time for 56 weeks
- Enrolled less-than-half-time for 112 weeks
- Or any equivalent combination
All public high school graduates who have enrolled into college are included, except for dual-enrolled high school students. These students haven't yet graduated from high school, so they'll be included in the report under the year they graduate. Any credits students earn while dual-enrolled will be factored in to whether the student earned 24 credits.
Demographic categories are based on high school status; that is, if a student was reported as economically disadvantaged or of a certain ethnicity while in high school, that’s what is reflected in this data set.
If you have questions not addressed here or in the linked resources, please contact CEPI customer support at cepi@michigan.gov.
Disclosure Avoidance
To protect the privacy of individual students, CEPI applies data suppression rules to sensitive data when report settings would yield fewer than 10 students in a given group. Complementary groups may also be suppressed. In some cases, values less than 10 may be shown when there is no risk of identifying individual students. Secure users can log in to view unsuppressed data for their authorized location. Please see How CEPI Protects Education Data for more information.
Report Labels
See the glossary for additional terms and acronyms used on MI School Data.
Data Calculations
When calculating the months it takes a student to earn 24 credits, the starting month is when the student graduated from high school.
% Earned 24 Credits = Graduates who earned 24 credits / Total Graduates
