Postsecondary Education Participation

• About 3 in 10 out-of-school youth with disabilities have been enrolled in some kind of postsecondary school since leaving high school, with one in five attending a postsecondary school at the time of the Wave 2 interview. This rate of current enrollment is about half that of their peers in the general population (41 percent).⁴ Unless otherwise noted, all data for the general population related to postschool experiences were calculated by the authors from the 2000 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for out-of-school 15- through 19-year-olds (U.S. Department of Labor n.d.)
• One-fifth of youth with disabilities have enrolled in 2-year or community colleges since high school, and 10 percent were attending such schools at the time of the interview, a participation rate similar to that of youth in the general population (12 percent).
• Since leaving high school, 9 percent of youth with disabilities have attended a 4-year college, with 6 percent doing so when interviewed. Youth in the general population are about four and one-half times as likely as youth with disabilities to be currently taking courses in 4-year colleges (28 percent).
• About 5 percent of youth with disabilities attend postsecondary vocational, business, or technical schools within 2 years of leaving high school.

Multivariate analyses indicate that several youth and household characteristics and experiences are associated with a higher probability of having enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges, including having a visual impairment or higher functional cognitive skills, being female, having a better educated head of household, progressing to the next grade level each year in school, and graduating from high school. Only having attention deficit disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) is associated with the likelihood of enrolling in a postsecondary vocational, business, or technical school.

The experiences of postsecondary students with disabilities include the following:

• Almost three-fourths of postsecondary students with disabilities go to school full-time, and about 8 in 10 are enrolled steadily, rather than attending school intermittently.
• About half of postsecondary students with disabilities report that they do not consider themselves to have a disability, and another 7 percent acknowledge a disability but have not informed their schools of it. Forty percent of postsecondary students with disabilities have informed their schools of their disabilities, and 35 percent receive accommodations, the large majority (88 percent) of those whose schools are aware of their disabilities.

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