Some colleges have started to track their students and keep them aware of the courses they need to sign up for each semester in order to graduate on time. Obviously this is not a complete solution since it would not address financial and social adjustment issues, but it would be relatively simple to implement and would be helpful IMO.
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-usc-language-20150907-story.html
Starting college is often a trigger for depression and anxiety…particularly when away from home. Their “safety net” is gone…parents waking them up, helping them stay organized, doing their laundry, preparing their meals, finding their lost items, etc.
One reason these kids often “lock into” endless hours of video games (or endless hours of TV) is because the focus takes their minds off their worries/anxiety.
Something to think about, in reference to high stat students who may struggle in college…
UA’s scholarships are dependent on standardized test scores, with a minimum GPA requirement (3.5). In fact, for Admissions, the CDS info list test scores, as well as GPA and class rigor as “most important”.
I believe this leads to a tendency to recruit students with high ACT/SAT scores, but only average (compare to UA’s peer’s, like FSU) GPA scores. However, GPA is a better forecaster of success in college than test scores. A lot of very bright kids score well on test, but don’t develop the work ethic (that a high GPA would indicate) in High School to excel in college.
Using 2013 data,
Average Freshman GPA
UA: 3.57 (it was 3.65 in 2014 and 1,768 students had a 4.0 or higher GPA in high school )
AU: 3.78
FSU: 3.85
UGA: 3.83
NC State, ranked a few spots ahead of UA has an average GPA is 4.37, but it’s average ACT score is lower than UA’s (and it only has a slightly higher average SAT score). It’s graduation rate is 74%.
I think UA’s test scores (middle 50% and top 25%) are fine, it’s the average GPA that needs to go up, which will lead to better prepared students, higher graduation rates and lower transfer out rates. How to make that happen will be a challenge.
You may have a point there.
While most/many of Bama’s high stats kids are also high GPA kids, maybe the ones that “fall apart” are the ones who had a 3.5 Weighted GPA, and only by including some EZ electives that boosted their GPAs to that threshold.
If so, and the reason that these students’ UW GPAs were much lower, may have been diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, depression, anxiety, Executive Function Disorder, and so forth…and everything came crashing down once in college…away from the family support system.
Maybe Bama needs to tweak the GPA req’t. I doubt it will want to remove “electives” from the calculation because then it would have to refigure everyone’s GPA.
At one time, Bama req’d a 3.75 GPA to get the award…this was about 10 years ago.
Maybe UA should adjust its GPA requirement. But since 88.3% of Honors students graduate within 6 years , shouldn’t the focus be on raising the minimum for the lower tier students? Is 88.3% not good? Not saying there isn’t room for improvement in retaining higher end students, but the problem really seems to lie on the lower end.
It’s not that difficult to recalculate the GPA and only include academic classes. Schools have been doing it for years. A new trend is to have students self-report grades. A couple of years ago FSU and UF started to use the SSAR (Student Self-reported Academic Record). You have to input each “academic” class and grade from 9th to 11th grade. Students only have to send in their transcripts if they get accepted to the University.
http://www.admissions.ufl.edu/ugrad/ssar.html
At some point, UA has to start slowing down it’s rate of growth, by being more selective in admissions. If not, it will turn into a UCF (52K undergraduates and only 8K grad students), a great school, but resources are stretched thin for undergraduates…
Changing how it calculates GPA could be one way to achieve this goal.
@Atlanta68 The problem is UA’s average graduation rate, which better reflects UA’s student body than the honor’s college rate.UA is far more than just it’s honor’s program.
Graduation rate is the one outcome metric must folks will recognize as important. Nothing else matters if students don’t graduate (and worse, are stuck with student loans…).
Improving the “inputs” by being more selective in admissions/scholarships is one way to tackle the problem. Others include improving the “process”, but increasing student support, tutoring, clubs, etc.
I believe @mom2collegekids has said elsewhere that UA looks at both UW and W GPA and use the higher value. My feeling is the minimum GPA should have two values; one for weighted and one for un-weighted for all admissions and scholarship consideration. There would need to be a study to understand what those minimums should be.
Two big issues noted by @mom2collegekids and @SOSConcern are: 1) “safety net” and 2) difficulty of HS AP/Honors courses. The “safety issue” cannot be figured out by admissions. The difficulty can be somewhat assessed by the HS ranking within the state, at least in IL HS rankings are available. These are somewhat subjective though.
Maybe students with borderline GPAs should be flagged by the respective colleges and followed more closely at the start. Not sure about this suggestion, just a thought that exception monitoring is easier.
Agreed that GPA is a better indicator of college success than ACT alone. I know many kids that do well on ACT but have lower GPA because they do not put effort into classes which would be a problem in college. I have also seen the converse often. I have always felt the HS GPA is a stronger indicator of college success than ACT because ACT is also an intelligence test and GPA shows intelligence and longer term effort.
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Maybe UA should adjust its GPA requirement. But since 88.3% of Honors students graduate within 6 years
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the concern with this issue isn’t 6 year grad rate. The issue was with the few untreated high test score kids with Executive Management issues who barely-managed a 3.5 weighted GPA in high school with helicopter parents keeping all the plates in the air…and then the student “falls apart” once he/she is many miles away from home and his/her support system isn’t there. This isn’t just a Bama problem, this is a nationwide problem.
Another, often unspoken change, is that many incoming frosh are suddenly no longer part of a team. That sudden drop in exercise can be a problem. Routine exercise is known to help mitigate ADHD symptoms. (Bring back recess for lower grades!!!)
I don’t know if it’s better to raise the GPA, or just accept that there will be some casualties? The school can try putting some “help” in place, but some parents/students are in such denial that a real problem exists, that available “help” may be ignored.
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Agreed that GPA is a better indicator of college success than ACT alone. I
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While I agree that uneven stats (high test scores, modest GPAs) are a big red flag, I don’t know if GPA is really that great of an indicator of college success…without considering curriculum. A student with a 3.8 GPA from a school with heavy grade inflation and weak academics (no studying, minimal homework) is also going to struggle in a serious major.
We used to see this all the time. The kids who weren’t in the honors track at the local “very good” high school, weren’t used to writing quality essays, weren’t used to “real” homework, and certainly were not used to studying, would see their grades sink when they arrived at Bama or Auburn.
The non-honors, non-AP tracks at too many schools across the nation are just too lightweight. A high GPA from those tracks means little/nothing. We’ve seen here on CC…parents looking for schools for their ACT 20 kid with a 4.0 GPA. Huh?
There seems to be a presumption here that the relatively low 6-year graduation rate is caused by struggles of the so-called high stat students, but the numbers don’t bear that out. I’m a data-driven kind of guy so below are some additional numbers to consider from US News and A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs.
University of Alabama Degrees Awarded (July 1, 2013 - June 30, 2014) 6 Year Graduation Rate 66%
6-year graduation rate of students who received a Pell grant 55%
6-year graduation rate of students who received a subsidized Stafford loan 56%
6-year graduation rate of students who did not receive a Pell grant or subsidized Stafford loan 69%
6-year graduation rate of students enrolled in Honors College: 88%
The data draws a clear picture, Bama is struggling to graduate those students who rely on need-based aid to finance their education. In contrast to that 55% rate at Bama, according to US News Florida (the best public school in the SEC) has a remarkable 6-year graduation rate of 84% for students who receive Pell grants.
What is Florida doing that Bama is not? The numbers don’t really provide an explanation for this. However, I wonder if this cohort is simply very economically sensitive and it has more to do with finances than anything. In state tuition and fees at Florida are $6,310 for a full academic year, in comparison at Bama in-state tuition is $10,170.
Given the fact that Pell Grants are capped at a certain amount, lower socioeconomic students at Florida are in a more financially secure position than their peers at Bama. How does Florida hold down cost at one of the best public universities? Well, for starters Florida is not offering all of that merit aid for OOS applicants like my son who does not qualify for a dime of need-based aid so this can lead to an uncomfortable conversation, but the facts are the facts.
Gator88NE, I am not trying to downplay UA’s overall graduation rate issue. I think clearly that this needs to continue to be addressed by UA officials. However, some of the posters on here seemed very concerned about the graduation rate among the high stats kids. Since most of the contributors here have high stats kids, I just wanted to keep things in perspective.
Fatherof2boys, cost could be a big factor, but keep in mind that the lower 25 % of the UF student body has an ACT of 25 or lower, compared with UA’s lower 25% having a 21 or lower. That is a big difference. So which is more important? Hopefully, UA administration is busy figuring all this out.
Also, do most of the merit scholarships come from UA revenue, or from endowment funds marked specifically for scholarships? I guess UA could offer more need based scholarships, but not sure how that would work. There are plenty of low cost higher ed schools in Alabama, so not sure that UA should try to compete with these other schools for the lower SES students, unless of course the student with low SES has higher than average performance.
I think GPA is a good indicator in conjunction with the level of classes. That would mean that W GPA should be a better indicator.
I looked at the Florida self report site mentioned earlier. I think that is a good way for a university to recalculate academic GPA because an algorithm can do it automatically. On the Florida site, potential students put in grade and level (regular, Honors, AP).
Agree with @mom2collegekids that a regular track 4.0 is not very indicative of effort.
@mom2college kids What I was trying to say is that there needs to be a match between ACT and W GPA. A mismatch is a red flag indicating either lack of effort (low GPA/high ACT) or lower level of rigor in classes taken (high GPA/low ACT).
The students that would be at risk need to be identified and helped or suggested to start at JCC or some other level.
One of the stat missing is 6 yr graduation rate of OOS vs IS students ( UA do attracts many students from AL, MS, TN and GA) , that # can give us more insight where the problem is coming from… Definitely the bottom line need to improve a lot and Top of the Line should be above 90%.
" A quick fix is to move UA to some State up North and that will satisfy the pundits at USNWR … Its a joke… " 
@Atlanta68 you are likely correct that the differential in graduation rates of need-based aid students in comparison to those who don’t qualify for need-based aid has more to do with academic preparedness rather than finances, or as I suspect it could be a mixture of the two. I’m uncertain which issue is the predominate cause.
In any event, 88.3% graduation rate for the UA Honors College students is fantastic. The average graduation rate of the 50 public schools honors programs profiled in A Review of Public University Honors Programs is 89% - so for all intents and purposes there is no meaningful distinction between the graduation of Bama’s Honor College students and those of the other top 50 public honors colleges. Keep in mind also that,according to Public University Honors, Bama has “the largest honors college or program on one campus” somewhere between 5,500-6,000 students. In comparison LSU is 1,491; UGA is 2,250; A&M is 1,385 and Tennessee is 1,585. The mean enrollment of the top 50 public honors programs is 1,714.
I think its harder to maintain a high graduation rate when you have more students. That’s why I’m not blown away by the graduation rates of the private selective schools. The entire student body of a school like Rice University is 3,926; Dartmouth is 4,289, CalTech is 983 and each one of those students is 32+ACT/2100+SAT. Its much easier to have an impressive graduation rate when the entire student body is dwarfed by most state schools entering freshmen class.
This is a great discussion thread. I love the data driven analysis. I love the social analysis. All of it is valid.
In my simple mind, graduating or not graduating is the responsibility of the individual. The individual graduates or does not graduate. The school can pick the smartest most independent student in the land and that student may fail to graduate in 6-years for any number of reasons beyond the control of the University, yet USNWR chooses to rank based on 6-year graduation rates. The problem is that the ratings algorithm is flawed.
If you’re going to include 6-year graduation rates and things like "how many Nobel laureates " are on staff of a university to come up with the rankings, then what about deducting points for those graduates who have hurt our society? If you think about it, Harvard might lead that ranking too when it comes to financial crimes? But then again, would University of Alabama be responsible for Bernie Madoff or does Hofstra get to claim him in their rankings?
Bernie only went to UA for one year, then finished at Hofstra. And I agree completely about the damage done to the nation by many in the financial elite, most of whom are Ivy Leauge guys.
Haven’t read all of the posts, but how are Co-ops factored into these stats and how does the impact of the selectivity of the upper division Nursing School program fit into Alabama’s numbers? Would these artificially (per se) weigh down the years-to-graduation and the retention numbers, or are these miniscule impacts? If Alabama has a stronger coop program than say another large National U, the time to graduate would be longer unless there is some type of factoring included in the USNWR data. If the nursing program admits way more students than will be allowed to funnel through, same thing; the U starts off knowing that nursing candidates will go elsewhere if they don’t make it into the program, but there’s no asterisk added to any USNWR ranking. But, these programs may only be a minor impact on UAs numbers or not be especially particular to UA (although it seems like the nursing program starts off with a large, large class). Just some thoughts.
Programs, such as co-ops, are why they use the 6 year grad rates and not the 4 year rates. The rates don’t increase much past the 6th year. UF tracks it up to 10 years; the rates go up about 1% from year 6 to year 7 , less than 0.5% from year 7 to 8, and then about 0.1% from year 8 to 9 and 9 to 10. I would think UA follows a similar trend.