National Student Clearinghouse
Student success is central to Lenoir Community College’s mission. Graduation rates are one indicator of student success regularly evaluated by our institution. The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) tracks student cohorts and reports their progress as six-year completion/graduation rates. NSC completion rate data is available for LCC students beginning with LCC’s Fall 2013 cohort. LCC’s Performance Improvement Committee meets annually to review the aggregate and disaggregated NSC data, identify goals, and evaluate outcomes related to the institution’s NSC completion rates.
Lenoir Community College’s six-year completion rates trend positively and routinely exceed the National Two-Year Public and North Carolina Two-Year Public Benchmarks published by the National Student Clearinghouse.
Table 1
Lenoir Community College Six-Year Completion Rates and Benchmarks
| Cohort | Lenoir CC Completion Rate |
National Two-Year Public Benchmark |
North Carolina Two-Year Public Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2013 | 41.42% | 40.76% | 42.1% |
| Fall 2014 | 43.13% | 40.28% | 42.40% |
| Fall 2015 | 47.97% | 42.17% | 46.30% |
| Fall 2016 | 57.74% | 43.08% | 47.80% |
Threshold of Acceptability and Target Completion Rate
To ensure continuous improvement of student achievement outcomes, Lenoir Community College establishes thresholds of acceptability and targets for NSC completion rates. These thresholds and targets are updated annually by the Performance Improvement Committee to reflect new NSC data releases.
The threshold of acceptability for the Fall 2017 cohort is 47.57%. The College expects the Fall 2017 cohort to meet or exceed this completion rate. The threshold is annually recalculated by averaging the College’s NSC completion rates. Using the average score as the threshold allows the College to monitor completion rate trends. The Performance Improvement Committee creates action plans when observed completion rates fall below the threshold of acceptability for two consecutive reporting years.
The target completion rate for the Fall 2017 cohort is 53.91%. This rate is one standard deviation above LCC’s four-year average. The methodology for establishing target completion rates is consistent with the North Carolina Community College System method of identifying “excellence level” performance at one standard deviation above the mean.
Table 2 details the thresholds of acceptability, target completion rates, and observed completion rates of Lenoir Community College’s Fall 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 cohorts. The table below compares LCC’s recent results with these performance levels.
