6 Year Grad Rate - What is too low?

Parents Forum
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<p>Since I'm old school and can't fathom why any full time student would want to complete undergrad in over 4 years, I've been focusing on 4 and 6 yr grad rates on the common data set and anywhere else I can find it posted.</p>

<p>I have been very surprised to find some good schools with not so good 6 yr rates.</p>

<p>I thought by focusing on grad rates and freshmen retention rates I could deduce some things -- perhaps the FA package is inconsistent from year to year; perhaps (in the case of large/public) the classes fill up to quickly and can't get the required to graduate; perhaps the school is too small and only one prof teaches reqd course; or the school does not have enough tutoring/help resources for the kid to get through academically. Although, I assumed the freshman retention rate would speak more to the academic support network rather than the 6 yr rate.</p>

<p>Now I am thinking perhaps my expectations for graduation are unrealistic. I expected 85% six-year grad rates. Some good schools like Rhodes are coming in just below that, but not enough for me to be concerned. Pitzer is coming in the 70s, which surprised me.</p>

<p>Am I trying to deduce too much from this statistic?</p>

<p>What is a "normal" 6 yr grad percentage?</p>

<p>Are there certain programs which are more widely expected to have students leave the school before graduation?</p>

<p>Aside from financial, what reasons are there for students leaving?</p>

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<p>You’ve been posting here for over a year and need to ask that?</p>

<p>can’t cut it academically
mental illness/depression
drug abuse
alcohol abuse
hate the school
homesick
executive function disorder
kicked out for disciplinary code violations
want to be closer to significant other
went to the school to play a sport and got cut from the team
went to the school to play a sport and teammates drank too much
pregnancy
health problems
severe health problems of a parent
pressured into college/major by parents and never really wanted it
didn’t get into sorority of choice
lonely/no friends
sexual encounters recorded by roommate
abusive boyfriend
parents pull the plug when they find out the kid has stopped going to class</p>

<p>I think there have been posts on about all of these issues in the last year.</p>

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<p>When looking at graduation rates, I’ve found collegeresults dot org to be very helpful. [College</a> Results Online](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/default.aspx]College”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/default.aspx)</p>

<p>When looking at the graduation rate for Rhodes you can call up the graduation rates for similar colleges. For example, Centre College has a 6-year graduation rate of 82.2%, 10 percentage points higher than reported for Rhodes.</p>

<p>The site also lets you look at graduation rates for specific demographic groups, such as white females or black males. Another thing to think about is the percentage of low-income kids in a college (which can be proxied by the % receiving Pell grants). It’s well documented that problems financing college are one of the most frequent issues that derail college graduation. But there are a host of other possible issues, as missypie has said.</p>

<p>Like many other areas of academic life, it is hard to distinquish between inputs and outputs. That is: how much of a college’s low (or high) graduation rate is due to the kind of students who attend that college, and how much due to the poor (or good) services the college provides?</p>

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<p>Lots of reasons graduation percentages might vary from school to school. I’d say the ideal mix for a high graduation rate is that the school has few students, lots of faculty, lots of support services, ample financial aid, plenty of grade inflation, and easy-to-satisfy academic requirements. Generally that will be small, wealthy, elite private, liberal arts-oriented institutions. </p>

<p>The economics of public higher education pretty much dictate that student-faculty ratios will be higher, and that financial aid and support services will be leaner. Nonetheless, some of the top publics—UC Berkeley, UVA, Michigan, UCLA William & Mary—hold their own in this regard, with graduations rates around 90% or so, just slightly below the elite privates. </p>

<p>But I also wouldn’t underestimate the importance of grade inflation, and the related matter of difficulty of the program. Notice that engineering-heavy schools, both public and private, tend to have graduation rates a notch lower than liberal arts-oriented schools. Caltech’s 6-year grad rate of 89%, for example, is the lowest among the top 20 national universities in the U.S. News rankings; MIT’s is next lowest in that group, at 91%. A little further down in the rankings, Carnegie Mellon comes in at 84%, and Georgia Tech at 79%. Engineering students will tell you that’s because their courses are harder. Maybe, maybe not; but there does tend to be less grade inflation in engineering than in “softer” humanities and social science disciplines, so more engineering students run into academic difficulties. Engineering programs also tend to have a lot of required courses, often in required sequences, so a student who is closed out of a required course, or fails one, may quickly fall a year behind, making it impossible to graduate in 4 years and that much more likely not to graduate in 6. </p>

<p>There also has been, on the whole, less grade inflation at public institutions than at private ones, according to published statistics.</p>

<p>For any small LAC, a 6-year graduation rate under 85% or so should be cause for concern. I’d at least want to make diligent inquiry into the causes for a grad rate like Pitzer’s, especially since it falls well below the rates at Pitzer’s sister institutions in the Claremont Consortium–Pomona 95%, CMC 93%, Harvey Mudd 91%, and Scripps 87%. There could be legitimate reasons for Pitzer’s lower grad rate. Keep in mind that anyone who transfers out counts against the original school’s 6-year grad rate, even if that person successfully completes college elsewhere in 6 years or less. It could be that some significant fraction of Pitzer students transfer to other Claremont schools and graduate at a high rate; if that’s the case, I wouldn’t worry too much. But that’s just the sort of thing I’d want to investigate before sending a kid of mine to Pitzer.</p>

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<p>One school that D1 had on her short list had a 6 year graduation rate of 14%. That made me take a 2nd look! the reality was that it was a commuter school, and plenty of students were working full or part time to either pay for school or for their living expenses. The specific program that D was looking at fell out of the scope of the traditional student experience, and D would have been living there so I wasn’t terribly worried. </p>

<p>I wonder how transfer students (either coming in or leaving) factor into the equation?</p>

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<p>Some stats were recently published that compared actual graduation rates for each college to what would be expected considering the student body. In other words, if you have very well-qualified incoming students, you would expect a high grad rate, vs. a college with many remedial and low income students would expect a low grad rate.</p>

<p>In addition to students who need to stretch out their college time because of economic reasons and a need to work many hours, these graduation rates also hint at transfer rates. I’ve never seen data on the number of students who transfer out of each college, but it can hint at widespread unhappiness among the student body.</p>

<p>Many students also need longer to graduate because they change majors. That is particularly an issue for a major that requires classes to be taken in a strict line of succession, and is a big problem for a college that is not reliable in offering all of the those required classes on a regular basis (or not having enough seats in each class to meet demand.) </p>

<p>Some college programs are designed to cut down the number of students in that major over time. It can be rough process in some colleges, for instance if they admit 100 students into a program, but only expect that 20 will graduate with that major.</p>

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<p>At a tour of one top engineering school a parent asked about the graduation rate. The answer was “We don’t think of education in a four year box, but five or six years.” I mentally added the oos tuition for two additional years to the large ticket price for four years I previously calculated, the stress on my student and adjusted this school’s favorability factor accordingly. It’s an amazing school, however going IN thinking about six years as an acceptable norm didn’t quite cut it for me.</p>

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<p>That is SUCH an important piece of the admissions puzzle if you are relying on substantial merit aid. It’s almost always for 8 semesters, not 10 or 12.</p>

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<p>missypie – I know why students leave before graduating, but I didn’t think items on your list shouldn’t account for 25% or more of the total population of a school. What I am really asking is, when it does account for more than 25% what are the reasons?
As you stated, the merit aid does fit in the 4 yr box, so from a financial end I am concerned with the 4 yr grad rates as well.</p>

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<p>Maybe, maybe not. Of the four suitemates that started at Son’s LAC in the fall of 09, only one returned in the fall of 10.

  1. Left after 1st semester; was a theater major and didn’t like the theatre department
  2. Left at the end of freshman year; executive function issues.
  3. Left at the end of freshman year; wanted to be a music major and his audition wasn’t good enough to admit him to the music school.</p>

<p>Do you have any kids in college yet? These kids go off to a school they’re so excited about and next time you see their parents, they’ve transferred to be with a boyfriend, or transferred because they wanted musical theatre and their school specialized in classical, or they got sick and came home, or they were getting Cs and Ds and their parents didn’t want to pay OOS tuition for Cs and Ds so they made them come home.</p>

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<p>I remember reading in USNWR’s one year that about 30% transfer on the average.
So indeed, if this is true, then if a school has a graduation rate of over 70% in 4 years, that seems OK to me! </p>

<p>Many of my children’s friends transferred to another school, dropped out, flunked out etc. I consider myself lucky that two of my children graduated in 4 years & am hoping that the other two will do the same.</p>

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<p>[HigherEdInfo.org:</a> Graduation Rates](<a href=“HigherEdInfo.org: ERROR”>HigherEdInfo.org: Graduation Rates)</p>

<p>It appears, nationally the average 6 year graduation rate is about 55%. Mind you, these numbers do not account for students who transfer to another school and graduate there.</p>

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<p>There is a strong correlation between selectivity and graduation rates. I would be concerned about schools that have significantly lower graduation rates than their selectivity peers.</p>

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<p>At some colleges, many do co-op. For example, students at Northeastern are required to do experiential learning and 90% do so via co-op progam (two or usually three paid jobs in industry). That means 5 years is normal. Thus ratings that assume 4 year as normal get skewed.</p>

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<p>Missypie, </p>

<p>What do you mean by “executive function disorder/issues?”</p>

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<p>Just as a disclaimer, the university I referenced does have a decent number of students that study abroad. This would only account for one semester. Their retention rate is reported around 96%. Although an academically challening program, they had one of the most comprehensive freshman support systems I have seen (as opposed to e’schools that don’t look at you until you are in your 3rd/4th semester when they are more assured you are staying). The comment given was in context of students that complete their education there and their attitude towards the norm on how long it took…not the overall percentage of first year students that graduate. In otherwords, I don’t believe he was thinking of transfer students when he spoke of not adhereing to a four year model as the norm. </p>

<p>They are both valid concerns that present different questions for consideration. If the program regularly encourages co-op work and you find that valuable in education than this doesn’t raise a red flag. If a larger number of students are leaving the program due to lack of support, take five years because they can’t get classes needed for their degree, then this would be of concern.</p>

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<p>I think the retention rates and graduation rates were an interesting data point but knowing that half of kids don’t finish their degree nationally tempered my reliance on those numbers. I appreciated my S1’s college that had a four-year agreement that loosely would cover costs above and beyond 4 years for students that work with their advisor to follow a plan. Not all kids could do this if they, for instance, wanted to do more than a semester foreign study or changed their majors a number of times, etc. S1’s college also had a fairly low freshman retention rate but it’s the kind of school urban kids dream about (very rural) until they get there… so there is higher than normal fall-off after freshman year. That is a case where selectivity has abit less to do with retention. Understanding what the numbers mean is important. Taking them at face value could perhaps cause someone to eliminate a college that could be a perfectaly viable choice.</p>

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<p>Yes but freshman retention rates can be relatively high without effecting the graduation rate. You would think that there would be more info on this given how expensive college is these days.</p>

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<p>There are several highly-ranked Engineering schools on the left coast, including Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, Caltech, Harvey-Mudd…not one of them has more than a four-year plan – NONE! </p>

<p>But and here is the critical element: you can get out with a degree in four years IFF you pass all of the classes; you don’t change your major, from say ChemE to EECS; and, stick to the four-year schedule with no exceptions and no additional electives. UCLA even gives the entering Frosh a four year calendar with recommended GE’s to fulfill the University-wide requirements.</p>

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<p>Missypie: Lawrence U?</p>