Better Late than Never? An Examination of Delayed Enrollment in the High School to College Transition

Robert Bozick, Johns Hopkins University
Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University

In this paper, we seek to understand the antecedents and consequences of timing in the transition from high school to college. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we find that 16 percent of high school graduates postpone enrollment to more than seven months after completing high school. These “delayers” are most likely to be white males from low socioeconomic backgrounds, who have low standardized test scores, who have dropped out of school, who attended public high schools, and left high school with only a GED. We find that after controlling for these selection characteristics, students who delay their enrollment have lower odds of completing a college degree. Additionally, we find that “delayers” are likely to attend less than four-year institutions and to transition to other roles such as spouse or parent. Accounting for these characteristics, however, does not explain the negative relationship between delayed enrollment and degree completion.