While you make some great points, how do you explain NY (big state) which does not have a flagship per se? It has Stonybrook which higher ed “insiders” consider a top flight STEM university, but locals see it as a commuter college. It has Binghamton which is likely the closest the state system comes to a flagship but which only recently could be described as having a concentration of the top students. etc.
NJ- different story. But if Rutgers were somewhere else-- it would be considered alongside Michigan and Virginia. But it’s not- it’s in a dense, large population/tiny sized state where many residents live closer to U Penn, Columbia (and other highly regarded U’s, just picking the two obvious ones for now) which also has Princeton…
So I’m not sure your large state theory holds up across the country! But it sure explains California…
This would not be hard to figure out if someone correlated overall data on incoming academic credentials, financial status, and perhaps other things like choice of major, volume of general education requirements, etc. to graduation rates.
It should not be surprising that graduation rates mostly follow admission selectivity, with student wealth and financial aid for those who are not wealthy being a factor.
So some schools admit lots of academically poor students, who often are financially poor as well, and thus are expected to and would have low graduation rates, thus meeting their low target. Such a school is considered ok? Ok for whom? Arent low expectations part of the problem?
Is the solution a construct where kids who are not college ready don’t get to try at all? And is that an exit exam (the Israeli model) or a high stakes test in middle school (most of Europe) to determine college ready?
I agree that a system where a four year college needs to provide tons of remedial help for the “not ready for college” population is sub-optimal. I just don’t see a solution here but am hoping you have one!
Having a large local population of strong students helps a public flagship only if many of these students want to go there. Some of them may choose to go elsewhere due to perceived better quality of education and/or experiences, even at higher costs. IMO, having a strong faculty is an even more critical factor. Some of the UCs have done well because they’ve managed to attract some of the top faculty, particularly in certain areas.
Actually UC Merced comes close to your second scenario. 60% of kids are Pell and 71% overall graduation rate. That accounts in part for its top 100 rating. Such schools are recognized and rewarded already. The schools ranked 350-500 do not match those outcomes
There is data surrounding graduation expectations with respect to student characteristics. For instance, Washington Monthlyexplains its methodology for how it derives its expectations.
comparing the reported graduation rate to a predicted graduation rate based on the percentage of Pell recipients, the percentage of students receiving student loans, the admit rate, the racial/ethnic and gender makeup of the student body, the number of students (overall and full-time), and whether a college is primarily residential. We estimated this predicted graduation rate measure in a regression model separately for each classification using average data from the last three years
In looking at the full data set from Washington Monthly, these were the top-performing state flagships in terms of graduation rate performance (i.e. actual graduation rate as compared to expected) among the top 120 national universities (ranked by graduation rate performance):
U. of New Hampshire: 78% (69% expected)
U. of Oregon: 73% (65% expected)
U. of Alaska - Fairbanks: 33% (26% expected)
Indiana University - Bloomington: 78% (72% expected)
U. of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign: 86% (80% expected)
U. of Wisconsin - Madison: 86% (80% expected)
U. of Delaware: 81% (75% expected)
U. of Utah: 69% (64% expected)
U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities: 80% (74% expected)
U. of Florida: 88% (83% expected)
Penn State: 75% (70% expected)
U. of Virginia: 94% (90% expected)
UNC - Chapel Hill: 90% (86% expected)
U. of Connecticut: 83% (79% expected)
This excludes some schools which people might argue are flagships or nearly, like Michigan State, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, etc. And most of the colleges in the top 120 are public, nonflagship schools.
Some other state flagships for comparison (threw Stony Brook and Binghamton in due to SUNY debate):
Stony Brook: 74% (expected 81%)
U. of Texas - Austin: 81% (expected 87%)
U. of Alabama: 67% (expected 70%)
U. of Kansas: 64% (expected 66%)
U. of Kentucky: 64% (expected 66%)
U. of New Mexico: 50% (expected 52%)
U. of Mississippi: 63% (expected 65%)
UC-Berkeley: 93% (expected 95%)
U. of Arizona: 63% (expected 64%)
U. of Nebraska - Lincoln: 67% (68% expected)
SUNY Binghamton: 82% (expected 83%)
UCLA: 93% (expected 93%)
U. of South Carolina - Columbia: 73% (expected 73%)
So we expect Few to graduate at Fairbanks, and indeed, they do not. This is ok in anyone’s opinion? Maybe if we expect 75% can’t graduate, we should fix who we are enrolling or fix the school. It doesn’t help to continue business as usual for that 75%.
I guess if we set the bar low enough, every school is a great success.
I don’t pretend to have expertise in higher ed policy making, but I do know that starting college and not finishing is a worse outcome than not starting at all for low income kids because then they have loans, lost opportunity costs, and still no degree!
I wonder why flagships offer any remedial classes at all. It seems to me that flagships shouldn’t. Maybe no 4 year colleges should. If you need remedial, it should have to happen on the community college level. And those classes need to clearly be labeled remedial! I’ve got low income students who are thrilled to get “accepted” to college without understanding that the classes they will be taking won’t actually count toward graduation. It’s a crime!
I think it means that U of Alaska Fairbanks is very different from the rest of the flagships. I am not knowledgeable enough about the college or the state to have any sense of how to increase the graduation rate there.
Agree that starting and not finishing is a terrible outcome across the board. And I know those kids too… starting “college” with algebra and trig… not realizing how long the path to becoming a nurse or architect is going to be…
There are so many variables when it comes to college selection, that it seems hard to label a college with 40,000 students in such generalized terms as “mediocre”. Especially adding in that for well over 50% of students, cost is a primary driver of where a student ends up. Add to that, there are different selection criteria for in state/out of state. The 2 schools I have experience with admit about 40-50% in state and 20% OOS. Do the in state kids with lower stats make a college “mediocre”
We are also talking about kids from 14-18. Many of them are “mediocre” academically. It’s an unusual child who can devote themselves to such a long range plan such as getting all A’s and putting in that sort of non stop effort for 4 years. Even 17-22 year olds at college sometimes have a hard time with that. So maybe it takes them 6 years to graduate. Or maybe their parents can’t pay financially and they have to take time off to work full time.
College is in large part what you make of it, just like your career. We all probably anecdotally know people who went to elite colleges and are not excelling. We all also know people who went to “mediocre” colleges and are hugely successful.
One could argue that going to a large, diverse school better prepares you to work in the real world, because of your exposure to different cultures, viewpoints, skill sets, than spending 4 years in a bubble where everyone’s parents have 6 figure incomes and all went to the same types of high schools, vacation in the same places and consume the same media.