That’s ridiculous. That statement assumes that it’s all random.
My kids and their friends were never in danger of not graduating within 4 years. Typically those who take longer CAUSE IT THEMSELVES… They change their majors, they drop classes, they refuse to take 8am classes, they refuse to take late afternoon classes, and on and on.
Schools that “meet need” are able to manage this better by simply telling the student who wants to change majors: sorry, if you change your major or drop classes or not take a full load, your aid will stop after the 4th year. That threat is probably enough to “force” graduations in 4 years.
Let the record reflect that the acceptance rate for HS Class of 2018 was 23.6%. And OOS acceptance rate for UMich was 19%.
But look, the Alabama football team could probably beat a few NFL teams, so Alabama has that going for it.
@Atlanta68 Alabama acceptance rate is about 53 percent “Average ACT: 27. The average ACT score at University of Alabama is 27. This score makes University of Alabama Moderately Competitive for ACT scores. The 25th percentile ACT score is 22, and the 75th percentile ACT score is 31.”
gottolaugh is using outdated info. The middle 50th percentile at UA is now 23-32. Try to be accurate when putting UA down. I got the middle percentile numbers from the most recent College Board site.
UM is more exclusive yes, which belies the concern for “social justice” that so many of its graduates display.
Yes, UA has very highly ranked Accounting, Public Relations, Communications, Health Education, and well respected Chemistry, Political Science, History, English, Theater, Music, Nursing, Social Work, Biology and Engineering programs. Its Law School is very highly ranked.
UA’s Business School is also ranked well. I am probably forgetting others.
@Atlanta68 OK so I was slightly off on Alabama by a point. The perspective and the perception does not change. That middle 50 percent between 23 and 32 is an incredible spread. That also tells me that 25 percent of the student body is able to get in with scores below an ACT score of 23…
What do you consider a highly ranked program? According to Niche
Best Greek Life ranks 1
Best College Athletics ranks 2
Top Party Schools ranks 8
Best College Campuses in America ranks 11
Best College for Student Athletes ranks 18
Best Culinary Arts ranks 21
Accounting and Finance 31
Communications 38
The point here is that some were wondering about the rankings and why they keep on falling. Some Universities are much more selective than others. The student bodies are much different and graduation rates are affected. This does not mean that many graduates will not find success in their careers or succeed. I believe great opportunities and challenges are available at Alabama or any other school. UA offers many great things that other schools do not offer. See above rankings. For many this is all that matters. Alabama also great scholarships for those with higher stats. Just can’t say the same about many higher ranked schools. The financials is the game changer for many of these kids.
DD graduated in 4 years/8 regular fall/spring semesters with double major within engineering discipline. She came in with AP courses. Did a lighter course load first two years for fall term as she was in the Million Dollar Band for 4 years (majority of MDB participants are engineering majors by the way); the last two years just needed to ‘suck it up’ with pretty full course loads. Did complete 3 courses over two summers (one summer course was on-line); two were engineering courses between junior and senior years where she also had an on-campus engineering job. Her last semester she had room in her schedule to take a fun course for her that she didn’t need to complete her degree (3 credit ceramics).
General statistics and school rankings certainly draw interest. However the overall fit for the student (budget included) is important. DD would have run out of funds w/o Presidential and Engineering scholarships - instead she had some of the college money we had in investments remaining (we had two sources of college payment in addition to the scholarships - a pre-paid college tuition plan and the investments).
UA really beefed up STEM and engineering - one of DD’s internships was with a firm that had a lot of AU grads. Good campus job recruiting (where DD got her job offer).
For those who wonder how UA gained their academic momentum/strengthening UG programs…former President and Chancellor Dr Witt in his own words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrV8g7kxJps&pbjreload=10
@got2laugh “The point here is that some were wondering about the rankings and why they keep on falling. Some Universities are much more selective than others. The student bodies are much different and graduation rates are affected. This does not mean that many graduates will not find success in their careers or succeed. I believe great opportunities and challenges are available at Alabama or any other school. UA offers many great things that other schools do not offer. See above rankings. For many this is all that matters. Alabama also great scholarships for those with higher stats. Just can’t say the same about many higher ranked schools. The financials is the game changer for many of these kids.”
The rankings remind me of Orwell’s Animal Farm in a way. All equal, but some more equal than others. The donut hole kids may find themselves without degrees a decade from now. I know for my husband and I this is all so discouraging. Neither of us were able to finish degrees because we ran out of options. Both saddled with loan debt (that are not yet finished for my husband). Due to that, we didn’t buy our first house until we were 35. Had the first kid at 38, ended up having three. Daycare costs of course were a nightmare, and then on top of that paying off loans. Luckily for us, we both are in IT and did well for ourselves in spite of no degrees (this opportunity doesn’t exist anymore). Unfortunately, some downturns meant jobs lost in there, so savings disappeared. Upswings later and all is good now. We make good money - and retirement savings are nearly on track. But little to no college savings happened. They just couldn’t happen. You can’t pay loans, pay a mortgage, pay for childcare and also save for college unless you are both superstars. That’s pretty rare. There’s a ton of people in my income range in this EXACT same boat, except most of them actually finished their degrees.
I think a lot of these social do gooders had parents who paid for their college thinking that everybody else had the same thing. So they say screw you high earning middle class, your kids should not get a leg up because you are too privileged. They can’t comprehend that maybe it just isn’t possible unless you also saddle your kids with big student loan debt. Huge student loans have been a major drain on our lives that we are not yet out from under. We will still be paying for my husband’s student loans while my son is in college.
We are not sorry for ourselves, and we are not sorry our son will go to a fine school like Alabama. He is a top student and would be a contender for these big schools. They don’t want people like us. Fine. We would rather him be at a school that has given him a very warm welcome, has been incredibly supportive, and clearly provides a ton of support for student success.
@elodyCOH how and where we spend our money makes a big difference when it comes to paying for our kids college. Some want a big family which is expensive. The average cost of raising each child is $233,000. While my wife and I would have loved to have a large family we knew that we could not afford to do so if we wanted to have a nice home, save for retirement, travel, and most importantly for this discussion, fund our 2 kids college savings. Giving our kids a great education is very important to us and we wanted to make sure they had good options and no debt upon college graduation.
Regarding UA, it’s a good college with many successful graduates but that doesn’t mean it should be ranked in the top 100 when there are so many great private and public institutions in the US.
@socaldad2002 Similar to you, we realized that if we had several kids that we might not be able to provide for them as we felt necessary so we made the decision to only have one.
@socaldad2002 We could have afforded 2, the 3rd was conceived while on birth control. We do not regret her one bit, though we did not plan on having 3 - the fact that the change from two to three drastically impacted our ability to save enough for college. Why aren’t people saying the same thing about poor people? Should we not give the pell kids any money because they couldn’t afford everything? Slippery slope stuff there.
The same issues apply to people with ONE kid, if their income is just a bit lower than ours. Same silly arguments apply there? Should they not have had any?
Alabama accepts about half of its applicants. And since half of those admitted are from OOS, the quality of AL K-12 is less relavant. Furthermore, most of the instate students are from the bigger cities where the schools are fine. If they weren’t the state’s cutoff for NMSF would be low, yet it’s not. It’s not high. It’s sort of in the middle.
But again, grad rates at public univs can be a problem simply due to a number of the reasons listed above in post 40 and others. It is also not uncommon for students at publics to work full-time or near-full-time to help put themselves thru college.
Bama has increased its merit awards for instate students, providing larger amounts for lower scores.
I would support a lottery or similar to help fund more aid for instate students.
Also, I don’t know if there’s any “forgiveness” if the additional time is due to co-ops. If so, that shouldn’t be.
As for the lower ACT scores in the bottom quartile. Bama consistently enrolls about 12% of black students. Unfortunately, the average score in the USA of a black student is an ACT 17. That likely impacts the reporting numbers.
Unlike the whiners in Calif that insist that they need lots of taxpayer dollars so that students can skip past their local quality CSUs and UCs and go to sleepaway schools somewhere else in the state, Alabamians seem to be very pleased with nearly all/all of their public universities. In the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve never heard someone say, “I went to X public U, but would have gotten a better education if I had gone to Y public U.”
That said, you used the word “equal”. Nothing is ever equal. The STEM students at UAH have closer access to Cummings Research Park. The prehealth students at UAB and USA may have greater or closer access to opportunities related to healthcare. That doesn’t mean that attending another Univ hogties them. Opportunities are there, just different. This is everywhere. The opportunities at UCLA aren’t equal to those at UCB or even UCSD, yet I don’t see the UC system doubling those top 3 so that various Californians aren’t made to attend “lesser schools”. No. Common sense tells us that students at all of these schools can achieve their dreams. It’s really on them.
You seem to really dislike how you think California does things…
In any case, the more numerous CSUs do not adjust FA based on commuter versus resident status. The less numerous UCs do, but they are more expensive than attending a CSU as a commuter. In practice, CSUs are generally commuter-based campuses, located mostly to provide broad access to as much of the state population as possible, similar to how you see Alabama public universities (though increasing selectivity at some CSU campuses and the population distribution in some parts of the state make this access uneven). The UCs are typically seen as offering more academic opportunities for some stronger students, but, being less numerous, are not practical to commute to for a much larger portion of the state population than the CSUs are (higher selectivity also means that many students aiming for UCs may only get admission to non-local ones, even if they do live near one). Hence, the idea that students strong enough to go to UCs will be supported FA-wise even if they have to move to the campus. Note that California also encourages the low cost commuter route to both CSUs and UCs for frosh/soph students through the transfer pathway starting at the community colleges.
Now, if we look at the Alabama equivalent with UA and AU, do people think of them as providing better academic opportunities (at least for stronger students) than their local state universities (the analogs of the CSUs)? If so, would it make more sense to offer better FA support even for non-local students from lower income families, or leave access to them primarily determined by family income and wealth? If not (meaning that they are considered academically equivalent in a broad sense to whatever local state universities are elsewhere in the state), then it makes sense just to treat them as another campus that exists primarily to serve the local commuter population.
Really, California is not that different from Alabama in terms of locating local state universities around the state to provide commuter access to as much of the population as possible. The main difference here appears to be FA policy at the (relatively few) flagships.
I am not a fan of the military industrial complex, but it is worth noting that UA alum, Marilyn Hewson, has been named by Forbes as the most powerful woman in business.
https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/09/alabama_alum_marillyn_hewson_n.html
She is the person who recently donated over $15 million to the Business School. Till Hugh Culverhouse Jr. donated over $26 million, it was the largest donation ever to UA.
And she didn’t get her undergrad degree from Michigan, but from Alabama. Imagine that!
@mom2collegekids: “As for the lower ACT scores in the bottom quartile. Bama consistently enrolls about 12% of black students. Unfortunately, the average score in the USA of a black student is an ACT 17. That likely impacts the reporting numbers.”
I hope you are not blaming Alabama’s “low” ACT scores on minority students.
You pointed out one very general metric from the population at large, but are you saying that AA students admitted and enrolled in Alabama are somehow less qualified from an academic standpoint than a White students? I would also note that only 10% of U of Alabama students are African-American, which is significantly less than that of the state at large.
WildestDream, what mom2collegekids posted is a fact. I don’t think there is anything in her post that attributes the lower ACT percentile at UA solely to the lower AVERAGE ACT score of its Black students
If the avg ACT of Black students across the country is that lower than White students, then of course it is much more likely that the Black students who enroll at UA are also less qualified. If Black students in Alabama were on AVERAGE as qualified as White students, their percentage at UA would be closer to their percentage of the state population. No one likes pointing these facts out, but to understand the context (a context missing in most states with much lower AA population) of UA’s “student quality” it is one key fact to point out. And no one here has argued WHY the quality of Black students is on AVERAGE, lower. So why the snarky and moralistic response?
And I think the impact of the lower avg ACT of UA Black students probably is seen more in the avg ACT at UA. Not a huge difference, but one that matters. Another thing to remember is that there is a higher percentage of disadvantaged AA students in Southern states like Alabama, so the avg ACT of Black students in the state of Alabama is likely even lower than that of the national average for Black students. However, even upper income Black students have a lower average SAT than lower income White students. Just google it.
We’re talking about students ADMITTED to Alabama and made the cut-offs, not the “AVERAGE” student. I think it’s demeaning to relatively small number of minority students admitted and enrolled at U of Alabama to assume that these students are somehow less qualified academics-wise than their admitted/enrolled White counterparts.
Again, if the cut off is 21, or likely lower if the GPA is high enough, then of course there is a very high chance for most of the admitted African American students to have an ACT on the low end. Of course there are notable exceptions, but we are talking AVERAGES.