I think graduation rates are higher at schools with higher selectivity in admissions.
If your average accepted student has a GPA of 3.87, and an average ACT of 32…you’re starting with students who have raw talent and self discipline. Students who have proven that they can consistently perform well for four years of high school. Students who test higher than 97% of the population.
If you’re starting with a population of kids who have a history of being top performers, your odds of good outcomes and producing higher graduation rates increases.
Pell grants are available to those from families with income in much of the bottom half of the income distribution, not just the lowest income range. For example, https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm indicates that a student from a family of 3 (2 married parents, Michigan resident) with parental income up to about $57,000 can get a Pell grant (not a full one, but a non-zero amount nonetheless). The median household income for households headed by persons of age 45-54 (typical peak earning years, also likely to have high school or college age kids) is around $70,000 (versus all households at around $50,000).
So 14% Pell grant students means that students from families in much of the bottom half of the income distribution are very underrepresented at University of Michigan. Michigan State University has a somewhat higher percentage of Pell grant students at 21%, but their family income range is still likely very underrepresented.
University of Michigan may give good in-state financial aid, but relatively few students from lower middle to lower income families are admitted to make use of it (not necessarily all the fault of the university, since inadequate K-12 schools available to lower middle and lower income families play a part as well).
My kid was homeschooled K-7. 8-12 she went to a tiny, dirt poor rural public high school with a graduating class under 100, and more than half the students on the lunch assistance program. Three kids from her graduating class got into U of M.
Just like with Pell grants, eligibility for free or reduced price lunch does not mean that one is as poor as commonly assumed on these forums.
Free lunch is offered up to 1.3 times the federal poverty line, while reduced price lunch is offered up to 1.85 times the federal poverty line. For 2016-2017, the income limits were $26,208 / $37,296 for a 3 person household, and $31,590 / $44,955 for a 4 person household.
@MaryGJ --Believe me, I love everything about Michigan. I have two degrees from there; I got a stupendous education. I’m glad they have 14% of students getting Pell, but that is not an extremely high number. I worked for a long time at a college where the vast majority of students were getting Pell–I know because I worked in a support program for low income students. Almost every student in the college could qualify for it.
And guess what? It has a very low graduation rate compared to schools like Michigan. As much as I love Michigan, it’s frankly completely unfair to compare it and other selective with schools dealing with the majority of students who are commuting, working long hours, taking care of family members, parenting, coming from schools with challenging academic problems etc. That your D beat the odds is great–that you think those odds don’t beat many, many other students is misguided.
While increased selectivity and having higher HS stats can increase the odds of graduating in 4-6 years, it’s no guarantee. Especially considering some high schools…including those in upper/upper-middle class areas and private boarding schools can vary so widely in academic rigor that a 3.87 GPA in one HS could be a 2.x in another.
For instance a few older college classmates who graduated in the top 5-20% of their respective respectable boarding school graduating classes from upper/upper-middle class backgrounds wouldn’t be included in our college’s 4-6 year graduation rate because they either flunked out, placed on academic suspension for a year, and/or took mandatory gap years for poor academic performance set by parents to the point none graduated within 6 years.
One in particular required 7.5 years to complete his undergrad…and that included a stint on academic suspension and a parental mandated gap period. If he had graduated on time with his entering undergrad freshman class, we’d have never overlapped. Instead, he only graduated a half year earlier than I did.
Another thing to keep in mind about 4-6 year graduation rates is that they may be influenced by non-academic factors having nothing to do with lack of academic preparedness or ability to focus to graduate in 4 years.
For instance, the 4 year graduation rate at my LAC when I attended was ~66%…but a large part of that was because many students would take a year or few off for musical/performing art gigs or to work full-time in non-profit activist/lobbying organizations which were part and parcel of their future post-college plans of being professional musicians/artists or activists/lobbyists respectively.
MaryGJ, I don’t know what else you want me to say. I have ACTUAL experience with BOTH student bodies. Lots of it. The number of pell students at MSU is nearly double UMich’s but that doesn’t even begin to paint a picture of the wealth disparities between the two universities.
Look, I love my experience right now at UMich. When I graduate, I will have 3 degrees from here and will have spent probably 7-9 years here. They have been absolutely INCREDIBLE in working with me as I’ve been seriously ill almost since the start of my PhD. I have sung UMich’s praises more than once on here.
With that said, you can believe whatever you want about this, that, and the other thing with regards to both universities. But the bare bones truth is that UMich students are very well off and MSU students are not. That is just a fact. Well over 50% of UMich’s students’ families make over 100k and a quarter are over 250k. MSU’s numbers don’t come anywhere close to that. So people commute. They work multiple jobs (like I did) and have to take reduced course loads.
You can believe me or not, I really don’t care. I am glad your D is here and I’m glad that she beat the odds, so to speak, and I’m sure she’ll have an incredible experience here.
@MaryGJ I will also say that I was a full pell student. I grew up poor. I’m middle class now thanks to the extremely generous funding that UMich gives to its PhD students.
I am working on an initiative now with U of M that focuses on recruiting low-income students. I applaud them for doing this… it’s an initiative of the new president. But it should have happened a long time ago.
Another factor of graduation rate is the differential between male students and female students. Female students on average have a about 5% higher graduation rate than male students. I think that is about the rate that male freshmen spend too much time in their dorm rooms playing video games and thus could not survive the first year of college.
Remember a few things.
1). Every time a student fails a class, they need to retake it.
2). When a student fails behind due to failing classes, some schools kick them out, others like my employer retain no matter what.
My employer has 25% 4-year and 50% 6-year. So on average, they get 50% more money per student.
I hope college will never be free in the US, and I hope one day students who aren’t interested or aren’t able to go to college will be steered away from it…
However, that would also mean convincing employers to stop credential-creeping in terms of asking for applicants to have a bachelor’s degree when neither the specific subject skills nor the general thinking and reasoning skills learned in the study to a bachelor’s degree are needed for the job or promotion.
(Assuming you mean “study to a bachelor’s degree” when you mean “college”. Lots of non-bachelor’s-degree jobs do require post-secondary education, which may be some specific course work at a community college or other school, but not a full bachelor’s degree.)
The above is premised on the assumption that if college is free, then it’ll automatically be open-admissions.
This is not necessarily the case…and wasn’t the case with countries with free college or those which charge nominal fees.
If anything, all the countries I know of with such free/low-fee college systems structure their higher ed systems in a manner that admission to universities/colleges is exceedingly selective and only those who are in the top fifth to top half academically are viable candidates for admission. The rest of the population are pushed off the academic track to college entrance to various forms of vocational oriented schools, apprenticeships, or even expected to start working as early as the end of 8th grade.
You don’t convince an employer to stop credential creeping by pointing out that a candidate doesn’t need thinking and reasoning skills or specific subject skills.
You stop credential creeping by improving HS’s so that a person with a HS diploma can write an email without grammatical errors, knows that Indonesia and India are not the same place, and can read a bar graph and understand whether a trend line is going up or down (and what that means). I’ve worked for companies which actively try to engage the communities where they are based- and cultivate relationships with the high schools. Getting a pool of candidates who read and write at a fourth grade level when they will be working in a professional office doesn’t help the credential creep movement.
@ucbalumnus I think you have credential creeping backwards. Employers are hiring people with bachelors degrees for lower level positions because they can not because they actually require a degree for the positions. I work for a small law firm. When the firm started the front desk person was always a high school graduate. In recent years the front desk person has become a college graduate because those people are available in the marketplace.
If college gradates were not available in the marketplace at attractive prices employers would return to using high school graduates for those positions. The large supply of college graduates are what is driving credential creeping not the other way around.
BTW-our current front desk person is a UF graduate. In addition to typical office stuff she is being trained to be able to assist the paralegals. There is room for growth for a college graduate that is not present with most high school graduates. The last two front desk people were also college graduates and both were promoted to paralegal positions.
We can’t hire HS grads in some locations because the candidates are woefully under-prepared. The availability of college grads is a secondary issue.
Front desk people do a lot more than answer the phones. They set up meetings and conference calls, they work with vendors who maintain office equipment and make deliveries; they troubleshoot when someone’s flight gets canceled due to bad weather, they work with building management when the office is located in a facility which the company rents, not owns.
We’ve had front desk people who can’t multiply using a calculator. We’ve had front desk people who can’t figure out how to get someone to Racine, Wisconsin when O’Hare airport shuts down due to snow (because they can’t find Chicago on a map). We’ve had front desk people who can’t speak a grammatical sentence.
Sigh. So we require at least an Associates degree to become a receptionist. Cuts down on the need to teach basic, 6th grade skills to an employee.
@MaryGJ - As a CMU grad who grew up in a small farming town near Mt. Pleasant. I am not surprised that it may take longer for kids to graduate from CMU. There are a lot of local commuters from the surrounding area. Mt. Pleasant is not a high income area so they may need to take semesters off to pay their way. I don’t think many people compare CMU and U of M. It’s sort of like comparing Georgia Tech(80%) and Georgia State(54%) which is more of a commuter school.
Right, so instead of just the wealthy who aren’t college-ready or college-interested can continue to go to university while the poor who are both college-ready and college-interested can continue to be SOL.
Making college free DOES NOT mean making it available to everyone. It means not putting an undue burden on low and middle income students.
About 80% of the explanation for graduation rates is selectivity. Students who are better prepared for college (as measured by SAT scores or high school grades) are more likely to graduate. About 20% of variability in graduation rates among colleges is attributable to other factors. Other factors include, but are not limited to, things like minority status, gender, distance from home, and public vs. private. The causal reasons behind these factors is subject for discussion. Ironically, need-based financial aid (I think) is related negatively to graduation rates, probably because more need-based aid is awarded to students who are at risk academically. I think poor study habits are a major reason for dropping out. Mental health issues are also a major factor behind dropping out but are often overlooked. Mental health issues include substance abuse, depression, and anxiety.