Only one out of five Cal State freshmen graduates on time. This article describes some of the steps they are taking:
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-csu-bill-20160222-story.html
That compares with 34% nationally for public schools.
Students need to commit to a specific number of classes and maintain their GPA. In return, they get priority enrollment and even a tuition freeze (if the bill passes).
Frankly I don’t see how this will do anything other than help students who are already among the best have a few perks. Nothing wrong with that, but it won’t accomplish the intended goal because people cannot generally will themselves to have higher GPAs.
Truth is that issues with studying in college are usually so deeply rooted (in life issues and prior education) that it’s way too late to deal with them once you are already in college.
Very bluntly not everyone is meant to go to a 4 year college. 34% on time nationally is ridiculous enough, 20% is just astonishingly bad. The recent drive to shove 10,000 more CA kids into the UCs also reeks of populism without recognizing ground realities. You need more community colleges not CSUs or UCs. If the problem is that the admitted pool is incapable of handling a proper 4 year curriculum, you do a 2+2 system to at least have some success. My recommendation is the CSUs should only be the +2 portion after community colleges and there should be a ton more community colleges. Only the best prepared should go into the 4 year UCs, the rest should do the 2 community college plus 2 CSU years. This will likely ensure that kids at least have 2 years of community college under their belt before they decide whether 2 more is a good idea for them or not.
As @NeoDymium pointed out kids cant will themselves to getting better GPAs. They are failing because they are ill prepared for college. The CSU bill is asinine and overly simplistic. Won’t make any difference
I agree that the incentives seem like they will not make much of a difference. But according to the article:
Sounds like it has worked at other schools in California. And the current legislation would also freeze tuition for kids in the program which seems to me like it would be a good incentive (better than the other incentives).
Part of the problem also is that kids often do not really have an incentive to graduate in 4 years. Colleges have taken on more of a resort feel to them such that kids are often in no hurry to graduate and support themselves. But seems to me we need to do something. We have a huge number of colleges/universities. Opportunities for a lot of different experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.
It is a complicated problem, the origin of which goes well off any college campus. I understand the majority of incoming freshman at many campuses don’t have the math and language skills required to begin college level course work. (There have been several articles in the paper about Sac State’s struggles with this). Lots of students also take a partial load to balance grades with family and work commitments (this can also force students to be picky about when they can take classes). Both are more prevalent at commuter campuses like Sac State. Many of these students don’t start with a goal of graduating 4 years later so, it is unfair to blame the school when they don’t.
4 year graduation guarantees are in place on several campuses (Pomona and San Bernardino to name 2) and an interesting idea. The interesting thing about them is how little magic is involved. You have to enter college prepared, take 15 units per semester, get Cs or better. stick to your major, and take the right classes in the right order - and you can’t be picky about instructors or class times. Funny enough, that’s what it takes for anyone/anywhere to graduate in 4 years.
My son is a 3rd year Jr at Chico - he has never had trouble getting classes and is on track to graduate in May of 2017. Among his friends, about half indicate they are on track for a 4 year exit. All his friends at the community college are well off that pace for a variety of reasons. Those at more selective 4 year schools are almost certain to be out in 4 years. Of course, lots can change for those with degrees in progress.
Those four year pledge programs are probably inexpensive to run. But they may also not have too much actual effect, since the students who are eligible for them are likely the ones with higher likelihood of graduating on time anyway. The typical conditions that students have to meet:
Assuming that one does not get derailed by non-academic (e.g. financial, family, or medical) problems, doing the above should enable a student at just about any college to graduate on time.
But again, the article indicates that at Cal State SB, 4 year grad rates more than doubled from 2007 to 2014. Other factors may well have been at play. But it seems to me without more evidence of what those other factors were and how much of an impact they had, we can’t say the program will not have much actual effect or make any difference.
The article says that “By 2014, nearly 23% of students in the program had graduated, more than double the four-year completion rate compared with 2007” (emphasis added). CSUSB’s overall four year graduation rate is only 8%, according to http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg06_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1076 .
Obviously, 23% is much better than 8%, though it is still low, probably due to other factors (e.g. students initially in the program needing to reduce course loads or take time off school to work to earn money). But the students who initially qualified for the program would likely have had a higher four year graduation rate than the overall school anyway without the program, although there may be some improvement due to advising specifically geared to four year graduation and priority registration.
CSUSB’s four year pledge program is described at https://advising.csusb.edu/programs/Four-Year-Pledge/ .
I agree that kids who are in the program are more likely to graduate in 4 years than the general population at the school. But I don’t think we should discount entirely the benefit of the program. And as you note, its not costly so what is the harm?
A program here, a program there, and soon you’re talking about real money.
There’s no guarantee that if it starts cheap, it will stay cheap - cost overruns are a very common story the world over. And California isn’t exactly the most solvent state in the world. If you spend money, it better give some real benefit to justify the cost, even if the sticker price is pretty low.
Because having 80% of your students take more than 4 years to earn a 4 year degree is cheap? There is no real money involved with an extra year or two (or more) of tuition, books, fees, room and board?
I am not saying this is a magic bullet. Just saying that the price of college is on a path that isn’t sustainable. Having large numbers of kids who take 5+ years to get a 4 year degree is part of the problem. This isn’t the perfect solution. And although there may well be factors at play which indicate its more of a correlation that causation situation, that isn’t conclusively known (at least not that I have seen). Let the program continue and monitor its affects and its costs. And at the same time take other steps aimed at slowing the growth rate of college prices. And monitor all of them and see what works and at what costs. And what works with one group of students or at one school may not work with all kids or at all schools. Make adjustments along the way (for both effect and costs).
It’s easy to say “do more” and “it can’t hurt since it’s not so much effort.” But that’s not going to solve the macro issues.
The issue isn’t that it is a bad idea to have people finish in 4 years. That’s a good and important goal. But we live in the real world, where money is limited, so we have to spend it effectively, even for seemingly small sums of money. As I mentioned, people cannot will themselves to have a higher GPA or to never fail a critical path course. It just doesn’t happen like that. The problems with graduation rates are much more deep seated than that, and by admissions time it’s usually too late to have much meaningful impact on student success (good student in = good graduate out almost always, and weak student in = middling graduate or dropout almost always).
The problem has more to do with two other issues: poor preparation in grade school (an age-old problem especially bad in the US) and admission of students who have no place in university. That’s where the money should be spent, not on the illusion that people can will themselves to graduate based on a few incentives.
It would be worth a study to compare at the CSU campuses with the four year pledge programs (a) students who would have been eligible for them but entered the year before they existed, and (b) similar students who participated in the four year pledge programs the first year that they were implemented, in terms of their four year graduation rates.
I.e. see if there is a treatment effect that the four year pledge programs provide, while equalizing the selection effect.
In terms of costs, the costs to the schools are unlikely to be any more than minimal, since it would just mean that existing advising resources would be changed to emphasize course planning for four year graduation if they did not already do that before. If there is course impaction, the registration priority for four year pledge students could cause other students to bear some of the costs, although the CSUs’ practice of major impaction (i.e. limiting enrollment in majors based on capacity to offer courses) probably means that this is minor at most.
Even if there is little or no actual treatment effect on graduation rates, the four year pledge programs could provide some assurance to some prospective students and parents that a reasonably motivated and prepared student will not necessarily be held back by the overall low four year graduation rates.
I hear that it is very difficult for those in the most popular majors because there are not enough sections of the classes they need being offered. Anybody have experience with this issue?
@ucbalumnus I agree with the potential marketing aspect of the program and that they should look at how the program is performing. May be some bias with kids in year before the program who would have been eligible (presumably not all of them would have participated and I would think the kids who wouldn’t are not as motivated and would thus be less likely to graduate in 4 years though maybe some kids wouldn’t participate because they were confident they would graduate in 4 years without the program). Though you will never get a perfect control group.
Well, maybe three groups can be studied at the four year pledge (4YP) CSUs:
A. Year before 4YP students who would have been eligible.
B. First year of 4YP participating students.
C. First year of 4YP students who were eligible but did not participate.
Group A could be compared to the weighted mix of groups B and C. Groups B and C could be compared, but there could be a self-selection effect as well as a treatment effect in the effect of the 4YP.
This seems to come up a lot from non-students, but is probably a less common problem than widely believed. CSUs have capacity controls on popular majors, so the main issue would be getting admitted to a popular major more than getting into that major’s classes, although if the major is at full capacity, some students may get their last choices of times and instructors for that major’s classes. Students who have work or family constraints on what times they can take classes may be more impacted by this issue, although such students are probably less likely to graduate in four years in the first place (since they are more likely to be part time or take light full time course loads).
I think it has to do with prior education. Most california public schools suck and even though kids from there get into the cal states and some of the UC’s they are not prepared for that type of work.
Their grades are overinflated by these lame public schools with less than rigorous curriculum’s and the kids go on to a real school and find themselves unable to go at the normal pace. My son was salutatorian of his class and went on to UCLA as a hard science major. unfortunately he went to one of these bad public schools that gave him a false sense of his intellect. He took the hardest classes in high school and got mostly A’s but those classes were a joke compared to classes at the better high schools. So he went to UCLA and was unprepared. He graduated in 6 years with his degree in the physical sciences which is great but he couldnt do it in 4 years. Now with a proper education from UCLA he went on to a 2 year masters program and was able to finish it in 1 year with his new ucla educational background.
so you see, the problem is the low performing middle and high school’s that are available for most california kids. They rank among the worst in the entire united states. They dont prepare our students well enough for college work. This is why they struggle to stay on pace for graduation in 4 years. The valedectorian of my son’s school went on to one of the ivy leagues and dropped out after 2 years. the kids arent dumb they are just underprepared and dont even know it because they take the highest level courses and get A’s but what they dont know is that those classes are watered down versions of what a real AP class is at the better ranked high schools.
What are their standardized test scores? Do they take IB/AP exams?
Not from California but does Cal State mean just CSU schools? Or are the UC schools included?
I believe it should be understood to mean CSU; that is certainly what any CA resident would mean.