<p>Remember that there are two Randolph-Macons--that can add to the confusion.</p>
<p>I think there have been many good points brought up here, and all may play a role in why students don't finish (or take a long time to finish). On an individual campus, you can make some guesses based on what you know about the institution and its culture. </p>
<p>However, in my experience "conventional wisdom" sometimes doesn't hold true when institutions actually dig into the situation. Some reasons for transfer and drop-out sound better than others, and institutions (and alums, and parents) want to believe them. Institutions should be researching things like: how many non-graduating students left in academic difficulty? How many non-graduating students left with unpaid tuition bills? Where did students transfer to? Etc, etc. They don't always pursue that sort of research. If they do, it's not likely that information will be public. However, before I'd automatically believe someone who offered reasons why the graduation rate is lower than expected, I'd want to know their source and reason for believing it.</p>
<p>The most important thing a college can do to boost its graduation rate is to attract students who are smart and hardworking. Universities pump millions of dollars into programs to boost graduation rates with practically no results. Graduation rates can be explained almost entirely by the average SAT score of the freshmen. Student academic ability is 80-85% of the reason for graduation rate.</p>
<p>US News has a prediction formula for graduation rates that is pretty accurate. It is based almost entirely on SAT scores and high school rank. Academic expenditures is the other factor in their equation. US News has a different formula for public and private universities and for LACs. Using the difference between actual and predicted graduation rate they derive an underperformance/overperformance percent. </p>
<p>The graduation rate overperformance/underperformance is a pretty good guide to the quality of the school. It tells you whether the school does a good job with the caliber of students who go there. I wouldn't worry too much about an underperformance of 1 or 2 percent bu an underperformance of 5% might be reason for concern.</p>
<p>I think the US News formulas do not work as well with the tech schools like MIT and Caltech although I wonder why Caltech underperf's more than MIT. The prediction for Harvey Mudd is probably off because Mudd is really a tech school and US News is applying their LAC formula.</p>
<p>There is a book called "Increasing Student Retention" by Noel, Levitz, and Siluri. It discusses a "force-field" model of student sucess. There are both positive and negative forces coming from within a student. There are positive and negative forces coming from outside the student. If the net effect of all these forces is positive, then the student leaps over the hurdles and graduates.</p>
<p>The hurdles are:
institutional beaureaucratic procedures
about 40-60 courses of study
about 25000-40000 pages of reading
about 100-200 exams
library research and written assignments
laboratories and other assignments</p>
<p>then the student can graduate.</p>
<p>But, there all these interacting forces at work that advance or retard progress.</p>
<p>positive external forces:
parents
peers/friends
cultural values
benefits of attending college
exposure to college-educated persons
teachers
counselors
college opportunities
financial aid</p>
<p>negative external forces:
lack of money
housing/roommate problems
transportation problems
work demands and conflicts
social demands
discrimination
rejection
family obligations</p>
<p>internal positive forces:
academic skills
achievement motivation
personal interests
career aspirations
enjoyment of learning
self-confidence
college-oriented values
identification with college-educated persons</p>
<p>negative internal forces:
procrastination
lonliness
not asserting needs and problems
self doubt
fears of failure
fears of success
fears of rejection
value conflicts
career indecision
boredom</p>
<p>If you check the weighting of US News Rankings, they give the 6 year graduation rate a whopping 25% of the score! To me, this is outrageous.</p>
<p>I agree with interesteddad that if a schools graduation rate drops because of tougher curriculum standards, it would be hard to argue that the schools has declined in quality! Likewise, if a schools has grade inflation in order to keep more kids, does this indicated a better quality school?</p>
<p>Graduation rates have to be compared to similar schools with similar sized student bodies. If there is a low graduation rate, compared to its similar competition, it might warrant further review. The reasons for low vs. high graduation rate are far too numerous to assume that it is representative of school quality. In addition to what was mentioned above, if the guy/girl ratio too high, this could affect graduation rate. See schools such as RIT.</p>
<p>Likewise, maybe a school doesnt coddle their kids enough or doesn't have a lot to do at the school, which leads to boredom. There are just too many factors that have little to do with the quality of the school. In fact, a high graduation rate for similar schools should be investigated as well. Maybe they are just passing the kids to get them to graduate. </p>
<p>Personally, I would like to see US News change the weight given to graduation rates for these reasons. Certainly, it shouldn't be more than 10% of the score.</p>
<p>Here's a question for you. I am looking at non-traditional small colleges for my D and came across Prescott College which looks like a wonderful fit. However, I noticed that the percentage of Freshman retainment is only 64% the percentage that graduate in 4yrs/81% 5yrs/87% and 6yrs/88%. Should this concern me? or are those figures typical for non-traditional colleges? TIA</p>
<p>Those are actually pretty high grad rate numbers. For the most part, the only schools with 6-year grad rates above 88% are highly-selective schools that start out with very high SAT students.</p>
<p>Not a dumb question at all. The Education Trust is at <a href="http://www.edtrust.org%5B/url%5D">www.edtrust.org</a>, but you can go directly to their College Data website at <a href="http://www.collegeresults.org%5B/url%5D">www.collegeresults.org</a> -- Once their, you can enter the name of a school and get a variety of data (retention rates, grad rates, pell grant recipients, grad rates by race and/or gender, etc.). I use it just because it has a nice amount of data and is free. The US News & World Report college rankings have a LOT more data, but you have to buy their premium membership to access it.</p>
<p>College graduation rates in the US are very highly correlated with family income. Many students who stop going to school full-time do so while they are still in academic good standing. Economic or life circumstances, not academics, often compel them to stop attending school full-time. This is especially the case once you get outside of the highly selective schools.</p>
<p>That's sad PDaddy, I would contribute to a fund to help students that have to drop out of school due to their economic circumstamces (anyone know of a fund like this?). After they have exhibited a good Freshman year in their school</p>
<p>At one large second-tier university there was this relationship between family income and graduation rate:
$0-$20000 50%
$20000-$40000 56%
$40000-$60000 66%
$60000-$80000 65%
$80000-$100000 66%
$100000-$120000 69%
$120000 and above 75%</p>
<p>It looks like there is a sort of threshhold at about $40000 where the graduation rate improves, but the improvement is rather steady as income increases. Maybe another threshhold at about $100000.</p>
<p>There was very little difference in SAT scores or high school rank between the income groups. </p>
<p>At this university there was a close relationship between academic performance (cumulative gpa) and graduation. I will try to find out if there is a difference in academic performance among the income groups.</p>
<p>Also, at this university, the amount of gift aid (grants) decreased markedly as income increased. So, how do you take into account the fact that low income families get more gift aid? Gift aid is a mitigating factor. It equalizes the abilities of families to pay for college. In fact, I have read that it is actually hardest for middle income families.</p>
<p>I think the effect of poverty takes its toll long before students enter college. Low income students who make it to college are probably a small percent. Low income students do worse in HS and on SATs partly because of the debilitating effects of poverty.</p>
<p>However, I think that intelligence and motivation runs in families. It is also true that families with higher natural ability probably have higher incomes. Which comes first, money or ability and success? </p>
<p>Gift aid increased as high school rank increased at this university.</p>
<p>Here's a data table that shows four-year graduation rate for small colleges in the US. It's a mix of public and private. I pulled it up from education trust because my youngest goes to Christopher Newport. CNU is at the bottom of the list (organized by graduation rate), but look at the SAT and the semester cost. It's not expensive, ther are not an overabundance of URMs or Pell Grants. I believe, based on his reports, that, at CNU, the dominating factor is an uncompromising faculty who holds the kids to a high standard. They expect college-level work and grade accordingly. Does this make CNU a better school or a worse school than the others in the peer group?</p>
<p>Redbeard, you make a good point here and thank you for posting those stats. I think at a certain point a college is only as good as the committment of the students wanting to receive a good education.</p>
<p>I believe the data on the Ed Trust Website will show that a student whose family comes from the top of the economic distribution has more than ten times the probability of graduating from college than does a student who comes from the bottom of the distribution. We as a society seem to care less about this distribution then we did at times in the past. Thisis not an achievement gap but an access gap.</p>