College Comparison IV: Four-Year Graduation Rates

College Search & Selection
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<p>No, like I said, the real solution is to offer an interim bachelor’s degree. If a B.Arch. takes 5 years, then provide a regular, unaccredited, bachelor’s in year 4. Then that person can choose to leave, or elect to stay. </p>

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<p>You just opened Pandora’s box, for many - perhaps most - of the combined BS/MD programs also confer the bachelor’s degree as an interim degree within the program.</p>

<p>Students accepted into this program complete the first three years of the recommended undergraduate curriculum followed by the traditional fours years of Medical School. Students are awarded the B.S. degree after successful completion of the first year of Medical School, and are then awarded the M.D. degree after successful completion of all Medical School requirements.</p>

<p>[B.S./M.D</a>. Program | University of Kentucky College of Medicine](<a href=“http://www.mc.uky.edu/meded/bsmd/]B.S./M.D”>http://www.mc.uky.edu/meded/bsmd/)</p>

<p>Upon successful completion of the first year of medical school, the student is granted the BS or BA degree in the chosen undergraduate major from TCNJ.</p>

<p>[7-Year</a> BS/MD Degree with UMDNJ/NJMS](<a href=“http://www.tcnj.edu/~biology/7med/med.html]7-Year”>The College of New Jersey | Department of Biology)</p>

<p>*Earn your B.S. in Biology at the end of your fourth year, and earn your M.D. at the end of your seventh year. *</p>

<p>[RPI</a> Biology: Accelerated Physician-Scientist Program (B.S./M.D.)](<a href=“http://www.rpi.edu/dept/bio/undergraduate/physician.html]RPI”>http://www.rpi.edu/dept/bio/undergraduate/physician.html)</p>

<p>The B.S. Degree will be awarded after the
requirements specified by the College of Arts and
Sciences (including the electives of the student) have
been completed successfully - (May of year 2).</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.howard.edu/library/preprof/BSMD-Brochure.pdf[/url]”>http://www.howard.edu/library/preprof/BSMD-Brochure.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>They may apply for the Bachelor of Science degree upon successful completion of six semesters at FDU, including the courses listed below, and the first year of study at KMU.</p>

<p>[Medical</a> Doctor BS-MD :: Fairleigh Dickinson University](<a href=“http://view.fdu.edu/default.aspx?id=1405]Medical”>http://view.fdu.edu/default.aspx?id=1405)</p>

<p>Students selected for the program enter Phase I, the B.S. degree phase, and obtain the baccalaureate degree (BS-Natural Science BS/MD) in two (or three) years on the Akron campus (summers included).</p>

<p>[Bachelor</a> of Science/Doctor of Medicine Degree](<a href=“http://www.uakron.edu/colleges/artsci/depts/bsmd/]Bachelor”>http://www.uakron.edu/colleges/artsci/depts/bsmd/)</p>

<p>The Penn State B.S. degree is awarded after either the first or second year of medical school, depending on whether the student selects the six-or seven-year option, and the Jefferson M.D. degree is awarded after year four of medical school.</p>

<p>[Penn</a> State Eberly College of Science | Premedical-Medical Program](<a href=“http://www.science.psu.edu/premedmed/]Penn”>http://www.science.psu.edu/premedmed/)</p>

<p>Hence, those combined MD programs do not require a commitment beyond 4 years. In fact, precisely the opposite is true, which is precisely why they are so desirable. Students earn a bachelor’s degree in a normal time frame and then can decide to leave if they so wish or stay and complete the medical degree. That’s an ingenious system for it provides students with maximum freedom.</p>

<p>So I ask: if many (perhaps most) combined BS/MD programs can grant waypoint bachelor’s degrees, why can’t other professional degree programs do the same?</p>

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<p>Not only do I strongly support Stanford’s co-term program, they also serve as a model for other schools to shape their 5-year master’s programs, because of this key clause:</p>

<p>The bachelor’s degree can be conferred before the master’s degree or simultaneously.</p>

<p>[UAL</a> - Choosing to Coterm](<a href=“http://ual.stanford.edu/AP/choosing_coterm/Coterm.html]UAL”>http://ual.stanford.edu/AP/choosing_coterm/Coterm.html)</p>

<p>Hence, the coterm program does not lock you into a curriculum greater than 4 years long. If you choose to enter coterm, but then change your mind and decide that you’d rather just take the 4-year bachelor’s and leave, you are perfectly free to do so.</p>

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<p>Swarthmore’s engineering program: </p>

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[Swarthmore</a> College - Department of Engineering](<a href=“http://engin.swarthmore.edu/#prospective]Swarthmore”>http://engin.swarthmore.edu/#prospective)</p>

<p>[Swarthmore</a> College - Department of Engineering Why Swarthmore Engineering?](<a href=“http://engin.swarthmore.edu/whyswat.php]Swarthmore”>http://engin.swarthmore.edu/whyswat.php)</p>

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<p>One may also consider the engineering program at Dartmouth, which allows you to earn an unaccredited Bachelor of Arts degree in engineering sciences, an accredited Bachelor’s in Engineering degree, or both, all in 4 years. The choice is up to the student.</p>

<p>Personally, I think all engineering schools should offer students the choice of an unaccredited bachelor’s in engineering degree, as some students just want to become familiar with engineering concepts, but don’t really want to work as engineers. They would rather become doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, consultants, or the like. </p>

<p>*With your Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) degree, you’ll have the analytical, creative, and communications skills you’ll need to succeed and lead in engineering — or any other field.</p>

<p>You can also earn an ABET-accredited Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree by taking additional engineering courses. Some students complete both the A.B. and B.E. in four years. Others take a fifth year. Either way, need-based financial aid is available. *</p>

<p>[Engineering</a> at Dartmouth - Engineering Studies](<a href=“http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/welcome/engineering_studies.html]Engineering”>http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/welcome/engineering_studies.html)</p>

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<p>Brown offers the same. But again, I don’t want to get caught in the debate about what should be done, the real point I’m making is that we don’t know what causes these rates at these specific schools by looking at four-year graduation rates. Therefore, we cannot make sense of four-year graduation rate since it can be caused by any number/combination of possible explanations, not all of them equally negative or damning in any way.</p>

<p>Four-year graduation rates when understood and attached to specific problems can be very meaningful, but as an aggregate for an entire school it really loses its potency.</p>

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<p>It simply means that prospective students should investigate the figures further to find out why a graduation rate may be unusually low. But the same could be said for any snippet of information regarding a school. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, I think it is important - for pure budgetary reasons and ROI calculations if nothing else - for students and their parents to understand the likelihood of actually graduating in 4 years. The lower the 4-year graduation rate, the less likely that the payoff will justify the costs, ceteris paribus, and that is indeed illuminating information. I don’t particularly want to pay for my child to embark upon a ‘study abroad’ program that has no educational value and is merely a vacation in disguise. {If my children want a foreign escapade, they can pay for it themselves.}</p>

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<p>What’s unusually low?</p>

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<p>Sakky,</p>

<p>You make some plausible points about curricular reforms in engineering. Truth is, I don’t know enough about engineering to know whether those reforms would work or not; I’d have to leave that to people with more knowledge of the particular disciplines. I DO know that most engineering-heavy schools don’t have especially high 4-year graduation rates relative to non-engineering-heavy schools, and consequently any chart comparing 4-year graduation rates at engineering-heavy schools to those at non-engineering or “engineering lite” schools is going to make the engineering schools look bad in comparison, for what I consider to be terrible reasons…</p>

<p>You seem to want to attack Michigan in particular but as I read these stats, Michigan actually has one of the higher 4-year graduation rate for a school with a major engineering program. Not quite as high as MIT, Caltech, or Stanford, but that’s pretty elite company in the engineering world. So Michigan is what, maybe top 10 in 4-year graduation rate among engineering-heavy schools? That’s not bad, especially considering that major engineering rivals like Carnegie Mellon (70%), WPI (70%), UC Berkeley (64%), RPI (64%), UIUC (64%), Case Western (58%), Va Tech (52%), Wisconsin (51%), Purdue (38%), and Georgia Tech (31%) all rank at or below—in some cases far below–Michigan’s level.</p>

<p>But to reiterate, I don’t think this is all about engineering. I think engineering is a major factor, but there are plenty of other joint or dual degree programs that enter into the picture (and these, by the way, tend to be radically different from double majors, which are common and commonly carried out within 4 years pretty much everywhere). I think it’s profoundly unfair to criticize a school for a low 4-year graduation rate if it has large and successful programs in which 4-year graduation is not the norm. You might disagree with its curriculum, but that’s very different from saying it’s failing to achieve what it set out to do, or that it’s failing to deliver on students’ and parents’ expectations.</p>

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<p>I’m only using UM as an example because it had been invoked previously by somebody else. Truth be told, I like UM. But because somebody wanted to talk about UM as counterpoint, I decided to play along. </p>

<p>But if you don’t like using UM as an example, we are free to use others.</p>

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<p>Like I said, I have 3 engineering degrees (undergrad + grad) from some of the most prestigious engineering schools in the world, yet to this day, I’ve never understood why exactly engineering attrition rates and graduation rates need to be so egregiously harsh. The vast majority of practicing engineers have told me that the actual engineering job is far easier than the study of engineering, which was invariably a traumatic experience from which I still have occasional nightmares. As a practicing engineer, the worst thing that can happen to you is that you can get fired, whereupon you just look for another engineering job. Maybe your new job pays less, maybe it’s in a part of the country in which you’d rather not reside, maybe you might even be demoted to a lower level of engineer. But you’ll still probably get another engineering job. But as an engineering student, you face the perennial danger of flunking out, from which there is no recovery. Your engineering career is over before it ever really got started. </p>

<p>It has been argued by many observers - including some on this thread - that engineering mistakes can jeopardize lives, yet I would argue that the by far the deadliest mistakes in the world have actually been spawned from a misunderstanding of the liberal arts, and in particular the witch’s brew of murderous social ideologies instigated by certain leaders of social and political movements, as well as the intellectuals who provided them with a veneer of academic respectability. It was argued that it doesn’t matter if the world miseducates somebody majoring in history, but I have to profoundly disagree. A miseducation in history or other social sciences can and has been the most dangerous type of miseducation of all, for example, when you mislearn that a particular ethnic group, religion, social class, or nation is somehow responsible for various perceived maladies of the world and how that state of affairs therefore calls for ‘redress’. The Nazis taught German children that the Jews and Slavs were inferior races, the Japanese militaristic government taught its citizens that the other Asian races should rightfully be brought under Japanese tutelage, the Stalinist and Maoist regimes censored a wide range of social knowledge in an effort to conceal their murderous crimes. I therefore see no reason to believe that a miseducation in humanities or social sciences to be any less dangerous than a miseducation in engineering. </p>

<p>I will never understand why engineering programs seem to take a certain morbid pride in deliberately attempting to inflict mental suffering on their students in some sort of juvenile macho contest to see who can supposedly be the ‘toughest’. Perhaps this is a simple case of ‘chronological fairness’ - that many engineering professors reason that since they had to run the gauntlet when they were students, they’re now going to force their students to run the same gauntlet. But that same argument also serves to ■■■■■■ any sort of social progress: for example, if you were beaten as a child, you’re now somehow justified in beating your child. </p>

<p>Sociologist Seron, who is engaged in a study of engineering students at four institutions, views “engineering as a very conservative profession. There is a strong sense of what students need to do and an attitude of ‘get with the agenda or leave.’” Olin’s Kerns says that engineering educators “are very attached to the concept that engineering education is painful, dry and difficult.” She recalls that earlier in her career, when students told her that they liked her course, a colleague said to her, “ ‘You must not be teaching it right.’ ”</p>

<p>[ASEE</a> PRISM - COMPETING FORCES - By Alvin P. Sanoff](<a href=“http://www.prism-magazine.org/women/feature_competing.cfm]ASEE”>http://www.prism-magazine.org/women/feature_competing.cfm)</p>

<p>As a first-line defense, engineering programs should simply institute higher admissions standards, and specifically, should stop admitting students who aren’t good enough to pass. Doing so not only helps those students - for those students would then be able to attend less demanding school where they would be able to succeed, but would also help the rest of the students also, not only because they would be shielded from the stress of watching their friends/colleagues fail, but would also alleviate the stress that they too might fail. </p>

<p>However, engineering programs ought to be made more flexible. The fact of the matter is that most of what you will learn in an engineering program, you will never use on the job anyway. You will have to be constantly retooling yourself through on-the-job training. Hence, who really cares if certain prereq tracks are no longer followed strictly, or even if certain engineering courses are left out of the curriculum? There is little reason for engineering programs to be as tightly structured as they are, particularly when today’s engineering jobs demand highly flexible types of engineer. As an example, many chemical engineers I know ended up working in the semiconductor industry for which much of their chemical engineering elective coursework proved to be of only limited utility. As part of their job, they had to quickly learn concepts which they had never learned before.</p>

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<p>All I’m saying is that I think it is entirely reasonable for students, and especially their parents, to expect that a school will grant most students a bachelor’s degree after 4 years of study. Granted, it may not be the terminal degree that you want; some professional programs do take longer. But at least it will be a bachelor’s degree. </p>

<p>The fact is, whether we like it or not, we live in a world where you basically need a bachelor’s degree. True, certain professions such as entertainment, sports, entrepreneurship, and maybe software development do exist where a degree may not be necessary. But apart from those exceptions, in this day and age, if you want a decent career, you basically need a degree. Employers are going to ask for it, and if you don’t have one, they’re not going to care why. All they’re going to see is that you don’t have a degree. Hence, I think it is entirely reasonable that a student should expect some sort of degree after 4 years of honest study. {Now, if the student was not honestly studying, then that student should not have been admitted in the first place.}</p>

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<p>A recent study—unfortunately I don’t have the link at my fingertips—concluded that engineering attrition rates are something of a myth. It’s true that students leave engineering in large numbers. But students leave other disciplines in similarly large numbers. The difference is not that more people transfer out of engineering, but that very few people transfer into engineering. Why? Well, most engineering programs require a full four years (at least) to complete, so you get relatively few people transferring in from math, physics, business, or whatever because to do so would put them behind the 8-ball. </p>

<p>I wonder, though, how much of the low 4-year graduation rate for engineering students is due to intra-engineering changes of major—kids starting in, say, aerospace engineering and then finding their true interests (or better career opportunities) lie in another engineering field. I suspect very few of those changing majors within engineering will be able to graduate in four years.</p>

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Awwww. The Berkeley boogey man still keep you up at night? :wink: </p>

<p><em>j/k</em></p>

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<p>I think the engineering attrition rate is so high because, at second and third tier schools, students struggle with calculus and physics.</p>

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<p>“All I’m saying is that I think it is entirely reasonable for students, and especially their parents, to expect that a school will grant most students a bachelor’s degree after 4 years of study. Granted, it may not be the terminal degree that you want; some professional programs do take longer. But at least it will be a bachelor’s degree.”</p>

<p>I just don’t agree with that. Most engineering schools list a plausible 4 years plan that allow a student to graduate and warn students that any deviation would result in additional year. It is very difficult to do, no doubt, but it is still possible. When do all those entitlements came from that students should get 4 years engineering degree, even changes majors? Engineering degree required certain standard and students are expected to meet that standard. Nobody forces students to major engineering or other five year major (like Accounting). Students can always graduate with “easier” degree within 4 years if they desire.</p>

<p>By the way, four-year graduation rates is very poor criteria for ranking schools.</p>

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<p>Jim,
A question on your final statement about 4-year Grad rates being a “poor criteria for ranking schools.” </p>

<p>Do you not like using 4-year data, but are okay using 6-year data? </p>

<p>Also, do you realize that 6-year Grad rates make up 16% of the ranking score for USNWR? My personal view is that this weight is both too large and should be divided in some ratio between 4-year and 6-year graduation rates. What do you think?</p>

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<p>hawkette-- though not addressed by Jim, I know myself and others on here have talked about the fact that 6-year graduation rates are more accurate measures since all of the hundreds of reasons we could reasonably come up with for a low 4-year graduation rate, by six years out, really aren’t in play anymore.</p>

<p>What I think you guys are all trying to get at with 4-year graduation rate is interesting, but this aggregate number still doesn’t really say anything specific.</p>

<p>I’d be interested in debt load and 6-year graduation rate having some kind of mix together. Kids who stay extra time will amass more debt and I think this is a large part of your complaint about low four-year rates, since not graduating in four-years is frequently a student initiated issue. If the debt load remains low even if many students are graduating after four years, than I think it’s less of an issue.</p>

<p>That’s not to say that I don’t think individual colleges should report four-year graduation rates-- I do, and they should be very upfront about it and why it occurs at their specific school. This is critical information for applicants. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a useful statistic for comparison across the board. If I went to a school and they said our four-year graduation rate is only 70% because we found that 20% of our students who took advantage of our great co-op program opted to take a semester off and work for pay full time at their job, I wouldn’t be concerned at all, but I’d want to know.</p>

<p>For rank-order purposes, it’s just not specific enough.</p>

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<p>mm,
With this and the other College Comparison threads, I’m trying not to present ideologically. I personally don’t use 4-year grad rates as a single datapoint, but rather as something to be considered as part of the overall picture in comparing colleges (as you are suggesting above in your comments about weighing this number in combination with debtload). People will interpret and weight these results differently, but I think that most will assign SOME value to a number like 4-year graduation rates. How much is an individual choice. </p>

<p>In addition, I think that the data points can help a lot in learning about a college or group of colleges. One or two data points on their own won’t tell you much, but patterns do emerge when you start considering 5-8-10-15 different elements. These threads are meant to provide those data points and let the reader make his/her own judgments. That’s not to say that I don’t have a view (I do!), but I also recognize that others will often see and interpret things differently, according to their own experiences, values, and needs.</p>

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Well said.

Also well said.
But shared data is like free speech. Just as the remedy for troubling speech is more speech (not censorship), the remedy for limited data is more data (not hammering Hawkette for posting these lists). </p>

<p>Lord Kelvin: If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.</p>

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<p>"Uh, data is never worthless (unless it is false, but then it’s not really data but just lies). It is the interpretation of the data that is at issue and can be worthless, but data itself always have some value. "</p>

<p>Very poetic, but simplistic view. You’re right though, this data isn’t worthless. It’s misleading and destructive. It is presented in a VACUUM without the rest of the data that will lead someone to accurate analysis, therefore, as presented, this data is actually destructive, misleading and leads to BAD conclusions with “proper” analysis from its vacuum. Presenting isolated data like this is one of the best ways to “use” real statistics to lead rational people to bad conclusions.</p>

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<p>^^^My point exactly tomslawsky. Thank you for saying it so eloquently.</p>