<p>So says a story reported in the NYTimes today:</p>
<p>As D2 searches for a school I have been amazed at some of the “name” schools that don’t even graduate half their students in 6 years!</p>
<p>And that is where the true test of the elite schools come in. They may admit less than 10% of their applicants, but their graduation rates within 4-5 years is way into the 90’s. Some schools that have open admissions or high admit rates have graduation rates way below 50%.</p>
<p>Most students attending public colleges probably can’t afford to attend full time consistently – the majority are probably attending commuter colleges and alternating school with work. The fact that they are technically enrolled “full time” does not necessarily mean they can actually devote full time to studies. My daughter is now in grad school, holding down a very demanding full time job, but technically enrolled full time this semester -meaning she’ll earn 12 credits-- but she has signed up for evening and weekend courses to make it work. As a grad student she’s probably better able to juggle, but undergrads who don’t have the benefit of parental support to pay their tuition are in the same boat – you have to pay the bills, and if that bill includes $5 or $10K per semester to pay for tuition and other fees, along with basic living expenses… then it can take a very long time to finish college. Maintaining “full time” status with at least a minimum schedule of 12 units might be necessary to maintain financial aid or loan eligibility in some cases – so that’s why you might see a lot of students who are taking the bare minimum required for that status. </p>
<p>“The report did not include statistics from private colleges and universities.”</p>
<p>So…does this tell us anything at all about public colleges versus private ones? Nope.</p>
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How much of this is caused by the students being higher-achieving (or less likely to have other commitments like work) to start with? </p>
<p><<<
And that is where the true test of the elite schools come in. They may admit less than 10% of their applicants, but their graduation rates within 4-5 years is way into the 90’s.</p>
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<p>This is largely because:</p>
<p>students come in ready for college level math and English
students come in with full aid, so not working nearly full-time to pay for college.
students are less likely taking less than 15 credits per semester.
students on aid know that their full-aid will run out after 4 years.
students are less-likely non-trads (older students, parents, etc)</p>
<p>I don’t understand the stigma of graduating late - for many, it is the result of having to maintain important commitments that make education possible in the first place. A student (who might also be a mom/dad/guardian, full time employee, have a chronic/debilitating illness, have other equally important engagements/responsibilities, etc) delaying graduation may simply be prioritizing their life in a way that fits their own unique circumstances. </p>
<p>I go to a public university with a lot of non-traditional students; one woman was a nursing major with a 6 year old. She had a lot on her plate - child rearing, a full time job, and the demands of what to many is a very difficult major. For her, the most important thing was graduating (which she did - currently a nurse at a major hospital in Boston 
) - not finishing by some conventional timeline alongside traditional students who didn’t have nearly the same responsibilities or obligations that she had. Her delayed graduation meant that she was better able to finance her schooling, as well as be there for her child, and her job. She came to visit my English class recently (because our professor helped her a lot with recommendations for employers, directing her to on-campus resources, and so on) and I found her accomplishments to be quite noble. Who cares about an extra semester or two if the benefits greatly outweigh the drawbacks? </p>
<p>Preamble makes a good point – it isn’t necessarily bad to finish college on an alternative timeline. Graduation rates are available for most schools, public or private, in the Common Data Sets, and four-year rates are surprisingly low at lots of places. I believe there are also some gaps in the data, as a student may transfer out of a school and that reduces the rate, even if the student goes on to finish elsewhere within a straight 8 semesters.</p>
<p>What I think is most noteworthy for parents of high schoolers on this board is the budgeting aspect of timely graduation. A tight 8-semester budget can be derailed by the need for developmental classes (sometimes not determined until orientation), change of major, transfer, or unavailability of sequential courses. Only the latter is truly institutional, the others belong to the student (or trace back to a realistic evaluation of the student’s original college plans). I think the prospect of timely graduation are something that warrants discussion with the kids, in 11th and 12th grade, when everything else is being discussed.</p>
<p>I teach at a public, somewhat well-known in our region. 25% 4-year graduation rate, just under 50% 6-year graduation rate. Freshman retention is around 75%.</p>
<p>The problem is that they don’t do anything about kids who are failing. I know this one kid will fail my class, again, and I don’t know how to help him. I have spent a lot of extra time with him, but I think he needs to be assessed for an LD. We have both urban kids and international kids who never ever were considered for LD testing in high school, and we get them, and they fail. And fail. And fail. And they break the rules about how many times someone can fail and not be expelled.</p>
<p>We have one kid who is in junior level classes in his major and can’t get out of our freshman level class. Very sad.</p>
<p>Yet if he was an athlete, he would get free tutoring and be made to study.</p>
<p>As for 4-year and 6-year graduation rates. They should be for full-time students only, or they are meaningless. They should be only for 4-year programs, not including 5-year and 6-year programs. They should also note what percentage of incoming freshman need bridge courses.</p>
<p>It is not bad to finish on an alternative timetable but I know about a dozen kids who are in their 20’s and are on some sort of meandering path to finishing a BA. They are not like the nursing student with the child who was clearly focused on an end goal and got there- they have typically taken a leave of absence or two from their original college, then transferred somewhere else, discovered that many of their credits wouldn’t transfer with them so after a weak semester at college number 2 they move back home, commute to college number 3 while working at a part time retail job and hanging with their similarly unfocused HS friends.</p>
<p>When the parents can afford to support a kid until he or she is 29 or 30 and manages to “get it together” then it’s fine. Kid’s on a longer timetable, the parental and financial support are intact, no biggie.</p>
<p>But when the parents have run the college fund into the ground, the kid has exhausted any available aid (maybe a semester or two of full enrollment but after an incomplete, a W, and a D there’s not much to show for it) and the likelihood of the kid completing the degree starts to fade.</p>
<p>Sometimes the kid never should have gone off to college in the first place. Maturity? Lack of focus and discipline? Mom and Dad provided so much executive support during HS that nobody realized that the kid couldn’t multi-task at a college level? But now there are loans to repay and no degree. </p>
<p>"…amazed at some of the “name” schools that don’t even graduate half their students in 6 years! "
-School does not graduate anybody, students graduate, nobody will do it for them.<br>
Why is it so importnat how long it takes? Some are changing major multiple times, others may be working full time. I was in school until I was 40, started working full time at 19 (proffessional job). School was more or less entertainment. in my 30s I decided that my first career of engineering was not really for me, so I switched to CS. I did not pay, various employers paid, otherwise, I probably would not even have my BS, but ended up with the MBA purely because of “why not”. At some point all 3 of us were at college, S., H. (also for “why not” reason as employer was paying) and I, both of us always worked full time. Going to school is a great fun.</p>
<p>Both 1 and 2 added a lower credit hour summer semester to graduate “on time.” Number one just because he dabbled with alot of English classes and ultimately 'went" for the second major. Number two because he wanted a second major in a complementary area of study. My youngest in engineering school was told to “plan” on 4 1/2 minimum. Our friends that precede us with engineering kids at that school all said it was 4.5 years - graduating in the winter class. Older two had mulligans with a couple AP classes that gave them credit for some geneds. Number three did not carry over any APs that would be awarded credit (his school didn’t offer the few that the engineering school accepts) by his big uni. Technically he “could” get it done in exactly 8 semesters, but I did not encourage that because he cannot tank his GPA and stay in the engineering school. All three of mine were pretty “focused” and settled into their majors early so there were no “wasted” classes…and I encouraged the older two who were not in engineering to look around freshman year and take what they were interested in. Both settled on a major after an Intro class in that major. Both ultimately graduated with a double major. </p>
<p>For the most part, college graduation rates tend to correlate with admission selectivity.</p>
<p>If the incoming students are better prepared, then they are more likely to be able to handle full course loads, pass all of their courses, have AP/IB/A-level/college credit going in, and not need remedial courses.</p>
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<p>Is he as Michigan State? If so, the flowcharts all seem to be based on eight semesters to graduation, assuming no remedial course work needed.</p>
<p><a href=“College of Engineering | Michigan State University”>https://www.egr.msu.edu/files_egr/files-ugs/MSU_CoEngr_Prereq_Flowchart_CHE.pdf</a>
<a href=“https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_CE.pdf”>https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_CE.pdf</a>
<a href=“https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_EE.pdf”>https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_EE.pdf</a>
<a href=“https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_ME_2.pdf”>https://www.egr.msu.edu/sites/default/files/content/UGS/Prereq_Flowchart_ME_2.pdf</a></p>
<p>However, the student needs to be very careful with prerequisite sequencing, especially if choosing to take some courses out of normal sequence. For example, ME has an 8 semester prerequisite sequence, so taking any of the courses in that sequence later than listed will result in delayed graduation.</p>
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<p>To some extent, it also depends on the campus culture. For instance, my LAC’s 4 year graduation rate was very low compared to its peers when I attended* due to the fact many students take time off to pursue musical/artistic projects or work full-time in a political activist type cause. </p>
<p>That and a number of students are enrolled in the double-degree program at both the college and the con which requires a minimum of 5 years to complete. </p>
<ul>
<li>~66%</li>
</ul>
<p>True, some particular aspects of the college may mean that students can take more calendar years to graduate without taking extra semesters of school. Co-op focused schools are fairly obvious examples, where it often takes 5 calendar years to graduate, even though only 4 academic years’ worth of school is involved (interspersed with co-op jobs). But even at other schools, “on time” graduation measured by semesters or quarters may be different from that measured by calendar years.</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>In other colleges, especially some local public/community colleges I know of, students need extra time due to need to alternate between working and schooling to make ends meet for school and basic living expenses and/or mediocre/bad advising. </p>
<p>I know of some folks who stayed a term or few longer than necessary because they were misinformed by advisers who either were operating on outdated college graduation requirements, weren’t informed of changes in college graduation requirements in a timely manner by their institution, or couldn’t be bothered to inform themselves of them before advising their students. In fact, it’s a common story among students attending some local colleges…including a few private ones.</p>
<p>And sometimes the kids aren’t misinformed- they just don’t bother to “look it up”. They assume that an AP course means credit when sometimes it just means advancing into the next tier of difficulty. They assume that a summer class means credit- maybe, maybe not. They think “Statistics is statistics is statistics”- well, if your major requires a statistics class with programming, SAS proficiency etc. and you took Stats 1 which is designed to fulfill a distribution requirement for math but will NOT prepare you for statistical work in psych or econ or genetics… well, guess what, you’re taking statistics again.</p>
<p>This is simply stunning.</p>