3 May2005
William R. Greiner
Reading the graduation numbersBuffalo Report on April 30 carried a piece reprinting data from a publication of the Education Trust dealing with "graduation rates" at UB and 15 other research extensive public universities deemed "most similar" to UB.
The similarity of these 16 institutions appears to derive from two data points: the median SAT scores for the first-year classes and the size of undergraduate student bodies at each school. Not a bad way to compare, and several of the schools are, like UB, members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization generally thought to include most of America’s leading public and private research universities. In my view, however, the data are not entirely self explanatory.
These so-called graduation rates are self reported by all institutions, and are collected, collated and reported via the U.S. Department of Education. In this instance, the data report results for a six-year period commencing in the fall of 1997 and ending in spring 2003. The first data point for the calculation of these "graduation rates" is the report from each institution of the total number of first-time full-time students matriculating at the institution in the fall of 1997. When I was young, we referred to such students as "the freshman class." For purposes of the institutional research specialists at each university, these students are “the cohort” for 1997 whose progress to degree will be tracked through 2003. The second data point for calculation of each university’s graduation rate is the number of students from the original cohort who completed a baccalaureate degree by spring or summer of 2003. Of the 3000 or so first-time/full-time students who matriculated at UB in 1997, for example, 57.1% of them had completed a degree by 2003.
So what happened to the other 42.9% who started in the fall of 1997? Are any of them hanging around UB still pursuing a degree? Perhaps a few, who dropped out or stepped out for a time and have come back, or who experienced other delays, but that is a tiny number, about one percent or so. That leaves about 42% unaccounted for. What about them? Well, about 20% or so dropped out during or at the end of their first year, back in 1997-98, and there was some additional attrition in 1998-99. Then then students selected their majors or were admitted to their majors in fields where there are competitive admissions, and the class, the reduced cohort, was pretty well stabilized, and most of them graduated by spring or fall 2001.
In other words, of those who started in 1997 and who continued to be enrolled each academic year thereafter, over 90% graduated in four or four-and-a-half years, and the rest finished up in one or two more semesters. This is the pattern at most public research intensive universities (see the data displayed).
In my view, the issue is not about graduation rates; it’s more a matter of drop-out rates. That is, why do public universities like UB lose so many of their freshmen and sophomores? The answers are many. Lots of our students are first-generation college students for whom the big university is a less than perfect fit. Many start out thinking to major in science or engineering, and fall to their rigors. Yet others fall due to personal problems, or personal finances. We note in this regard that a high proportion of our students have to work their way through. This is borne out by the relatively high percentage of UB students who receive federal Pell grants, as is also the case at Stony Brook, whose "graduation rate" is about like ours.
Admissions and other student affairs staffs labor mightily to assist students who experience problems which interfere with their progress toward degrees, but in the end it’s mostly a personal choice to stay or go. But those who do decide to go are forever carried on our books as part of an entering "cohort," thus yielding "graduation rates" which suggest that only about 60% of those who enroll will graduate, but does not reveal that this result follows from the personal choices of those students who, for whatever reason, drop out. Many major publics confront these issues by attempting to raise the "profile" of their entering classes, seeking to attract "better" students, i.e. those who have higher grade point averages, higher rank in their high school classes, and higher SAT scores. These indicators of success tend to be associated with students from more "well off" families, thus mitigating some of the financial stresses often associated with dropping out. But this "better student" strategy poses difficult questions for public institutions to answer: What balance should we strive to achieve between student access and student success? And how should that be done in a public policy framework where higher education is highly appreciated but now seen as a lesser public priority?
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.