Earlier this year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published new data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) 20/22 Longitudinal Study. The study followed more than 22,300 first-time postsecondary students entering college in the 2019-20 school year over a three-year period.
ACTE analyzed the data and found that 61% of first-time postsecondary students were enrolled in a program that NCES classified as CTE, including 61.9% of public two-year students and 59.1% of public four-year students. These CTE learners’ career plans focused on health care (17.4%), management (12.9%), business and financial operations (9.8%) and computer-related occupations (9.6%).
When disaggregating by student characteristics, we found the following:
- 79.8% of beginning postsecondary students aged 30 or above were enrolled in a CTE program, compared to 77.6% of students aged 24-29 and 59.3% of students aged 15-23.
- 76.2% of veteran students were in a CTE program.
- 82.1% of single parents or caretakers were in a CTE program.
- Across racial/ethnic groups, Black students were the most likely to be enrolled in a CTE program (66.6%), followed by American Indian/Alaska Native (65.6%) and Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander students (65.4%).
- 64.4% of male students and 58.1% of female students were in a CTE program.
- Approximately 54.8% of students with disabilities were in a CTE program.
Data was also provided on students’ high school experiences and coursetaking:
- 63% of CTE students took a college credit course in high school, 51.3% took an AP course and 4% took an IB course. High school GPAs were similar between CTE and non-CTE/undecided students.
- Between the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, 6.7% of students participated in an apprenticeship program and 25.6% participated in an internship, with CTE students having higher participation rates (7.9% and 27.8%, respectively) than non-CTE/undecided students (4.9% and 22.6%, respectively).
- 78% of students rated career development and job placement services as important, but only 32.5% had actually used them. CTE and non-CTE/undecided students had similar usage rates.
In addition, 22.4% of CTE students in 2022 held an industry certification or occupational license relevant to their current or most recent job, compared to 16.4% of non-CTE/undecided students.
Readers can explore and analyze the data themselves through DataLab, and researchers interested in obtaining a restricted-use dataset can learn more here. A second follow-up data collection that was planned for 2025 did not occur following staffing reductions and project cuts at NCES.
