<p>Overall, the 6 year graduation rate is just 54%, with minorities faring even worse.</p>
<p>Seemingly similar schools (in terms of size and incoming student ability) often have quite differing graduation rates. The article compares Penn State (80% graduate) with Minnesota (about half graduate) - the schools are comparable in size, price, and student scores.</p>
<p>Yet Another Smith Plug from TheDad (YASP): one of the things that impresses the heck out of me is Smith's academic advising. Unless you transfern or drop out, you're graduating in four years. My D has just registered for her second year/second semester and received some very thoughtful, nuanced advice in light of her double major and spending junior year Away. I can compare it directly to the UC's, which I have no reason to suppose are significantly different from other large universities (dunno if public/private makes as much a difference as size), and the two are not only not on the same page or chapter, they're not even in the same book.</p>
<p>Good link, Roger. I started a thread on this a while back and thought the conversation was quite interesting re what could account for wide variance in grad rates. But that begs the question -- okay, once you've adjusted for all of the obvious variables (race, class, public v. private, etc.), there is STILL a wide variance sometimes.</p>
<p>Many kids going to schools in cities work their way through. Get the work numbers and your predictions will fit better. Nobody hangs around State College but many Minny kids go off and on as $$$ permits and work and live on their own.</p>
<p>While there are lots of external factors that influence retention and graduation rates, I have to imagine that institutional factors play a significant role.</p>
<p>At one point, some schools undoubtedly had the philosophy that part of their job was to maintain a rigorous curriculum and weed out those students who weren't up to the task. This may not always be a bad thing.</p>
<p>Today, however, it's pretty rare to hear a college administrator to talk about "weeding out". With USNews giving points for retention and graduation, schools exert varying degrees of effort to try to salvage some portion of the students headed for dropout status.</p>
<p>R-D, in my day all engineering students were given the "look to your right-look to your left" on the first day of class(all engineering students were required to take a non-credit, 8 session class which explained the College of Engineering academic expectations and introduction into each department in the college-it was wonderful-I had never heard about sanitary(now environmental) engineering before and was intrigued enough to enroll in Civil Eng vs ME which I was leaning toward)</p>
<p>As a professor I dearly want my students to succeed and graduate. I will always go out of my way to help students struggling in my class. But I have little sympathy for those who do not put in enough effort to succeed in the class and do not hesitate to give them an appropriate grade. However this happens very rarely thank goodness.</p>
<p>My sons college offers extra review session in many of the frosh science and engineering courses which he took advantage of. Most now have writing centers which are a wonderful thing. And some now offer help regarding things like time management, study and learning techniques, etc. BTW, if a student comes to me for additional help I usually talk about things like time management and alway ask to see his/her class notes and offer suggentions on improvement.</p>
<p>There are many ways to improve graduaation rates and avoid watering down academic requirements and expectations.</p>
<p>I think it's very important to look at graduation rates when comparing colleges you want to attend. Though many students drop out for a number of reasons, the graduation rate is a great indicator of a school's ability to offer a good undergraduate education. If a school has a low graduation rate, it may point to (a) poor student advising that doesn't help students properly finish 4 years of college on time or at all, (b) having a lack of enough required classes available/offered that allow students to finish their majors, (c) bad financial aid that doesn't allow students the ability to continue attending that school, or (d) a bad collegiate environment where students just drop-out or tranfer to a better school. </p>
<p>If students enjoy attending a school and a school does a good job offering the necessary components that help students graduate on time (or at all), that college would have a high graduation rate.</p>
<p>This website searches for the graduation rates as well as fin aid details, diversity stats, etc. for the majority of colleges in the U.S. Good comparison tool. I think Jay Mathews wrote about it in the Wash. Post last spring.</p>
<p>This whole subject is very serious . . .in my home state of TN, the graduation rate is NOT GOOD. Recent stats I received for # of college grads in the state reflect a rate of less than 24%.</p>
<p>I was looking at a school with a lower graduation rate. It is probably average, but lower than I would be satisfied with if my S were to attend. I spoke to a student and asked why. He told me that there are 2 reasons that he is aware of. The first is that a couple of majors that really require 4.5 years are factored in, and are popular majors at this school. The second is that there is a larger commuter population. Many of these students apparently opt to take 12 credits at a time, and work their way through. By taking 12 credits every semester rather than 15-16, they cannot graduate in 4 years. I thought there was something wrong with the school, but came to find out it is probably not the school that is responsible.</p>
<p>Actually, most graduation rates take into account the number of graduates after 6 years (both collegeresults.org & US News) - that's already giving students 2 more years to finish their bachelors degree. So, a school w/ a low graduation rate due to students not finishing in 6 years I believe points to a problem w/ the college. Yes, the students do have to take responsibility for their education, but I believe if so many students aren't graduating on time or at all, then there must be an institutional deterrent (i.e. not enough classes offered to finish one's major, subpar advising system, poor financial aid, etc.)</p>
<p>I think it is important to look beyond the "overall" graduation rates and consider your child (or yourself) in context of some specifics. For instance, Mini has suggested that looking at the percentage of Pell grant recipients is one way of getting a sense of how much financial issues may affect graduation rates. Other factors to consider include: graduation rates by racial group, the percentage of part time students at a particular school, the percentage of non-traditional students (over age 25), average SAT scores of enrolled students, even the breakdown of degrees granted (engineering students often take longer to graduate), how many students transfer to other schools vs. just dropping out, etc. </p>
<p>In any case, it is important to look beyond just the overall graduation rates and see where your child fits in --- will he be towards the low end economically? What are her chances of graduating in 4 years based on grad rates for her race? How do his or her test scores fall in the school's range? All of these - and other factors - are indications of how your particular child might fare at a school, which I think is the most important thing; if you only look at the overall graduation rate, you're missing quite a bit of information. All of this information is available at the site mentioned above, as well as the IPEDS site, <a href="http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/which%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/which</a> gives even more detail, including the breakdowns of majors.</p>
<p>I wish I could post the link to the study I did, because it contained some other very useful information, but as I said, I am no longer allowed to do so. Hopefully, the above information will give some an idea of how to begin to put graduation rates into context.</p>
<p>I wanted to also mention that the organization that maintains the collegeresults.org site, as mentioned above, has some very interesting case studies on what individual schools are doing to improve graduation rates. The case studies are a good benchmark of questions to ask about advising, support services, and retention policies when you are looking at schools with your child. While some schools are starting to focus on retention, my research and reading shows most are still very much focused on simply getting them in the door, in spite of the information mentioned in the article quoted by Roger.</p>
<p>I'd like to call attention to one enlightened policy that probably has the effect of improving overall graduation rates (I'm less certain how it affects time-to-completion, that is, how they figure this into their CDS). RISD has a policy that if a student completes one year (foundation year), she can take a leave-of-absence for up to 10 years and return without the need to reapply. I think the college figured out that a lot of kids may need a time-out, and the very intensity of RISD may contribute to that need. (Heavy courseload, heavy homework load, mandatory attendence -- three missed classes and you are automatically dropped.) Students who take such a leave may well gain experience that will make them better artists and designers, or at least have a chance to get their heads straight. Yet RISD ends up with a quite high 6-year graduation rate, above 90% the last time I looked.</p>