Progression to graduate school from the "Elite" colleges and universities

This paper addresses the concern that too few students will pursue doctoral degrees and academic careers by examining surveys of graduating seniors made in 1982, 1984 and 1989 at the selective, private institutions that comprise the Consortium on Financing Higher Education. In addition to simple descriptive statistics about these students' self-reported intentions to pursue graduate degrees, regression analyses are presented that identify the effects of sex, race and income differences among undergraduates as well as institutional characteristics that encourage progression to graduate school. Results indicate that debt does not inhibit graduate school attendance but that certain individual and institutional attributes have statistically significant effects on rates of progression.