Diplomas and Dropouts - Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Do

[gbesq]

I can't really say that the numbers for state colleges and universities surprise me. With certain exceptions (notably the "public ivies") many state institutions have a legislative mandate to admit as many resident applicants as possible, including those who are marginally qualifed to handle college level work, in order to increase access to higher education. If a segment of those applicants can't handle the work and have to drop out, then so be it. From this perspective, it's better to admit too many applicants, and give the marginal students a chance to prove themselves, than it is to deny admission to those students who may be late bloomers and who will succeed at college level work.

[Yasmin]

""Even some schools highly touted on CC have disturbingly low graduation rates. Here are a few:

New College of Florida 56%
St. John's (NM) 56%
Hendrix 66%
Northeastern U 66%
Goucher 67%
St. John's (MD) 71%
Knox 72%
Rhodes 73%
Tulane 76%
Reed 76%
U of Miami 76%
Bard 76%
George Washington U 78%
Kalamazoo 78% ""


Rhodes, Reed and St.John's are all on my college application list. :-S should I reconsider my decision to apply as a result of this thread?

editt: it has occured to me that many students who go to st.john's transfer between two campuses....also the reat books program isn't really for everyone....would that explain the low graduation rate?
Also I hear Reed is very, very difficult...not everyone who gets in can make through, is that why?

[northeastmom]

Yasmin, here are some more. I just found out that SUNY New Paltz has a 4 year graduation rate of 32.2%, and SUNY Oneonta is not much better at 36.2%.

As far as a few surprises that I saw, Rollins has a 4 year graduation rate of 59.3%, Ohio Wesleyan is 60%. I do think that OWU is willing to take more chances on students with some blemishes on their hs transcripts which may account for a lower graduation rate.

My source was the collegeresults website.

[vossron]

I would say Reed is very demanding, but if you're admitted, you've already proven that you can succeed. I heard that the biggest reason students have left Reed is because of being surprised at what they found upon arrival. It seems like Reed is trying to fix this; Hum 110, the demanding freshman "Great Books" course, is mentioned 19 times in the view book, for one. Grad rates and retention have been increasing.

[drhouse]

Does anyone know what Cornell University's graduation success rate is?

[toadstool]

From the source report: Cornell 92%

[lantzk]

it has occured to me that many students who go to st.john's transfer between two campuses....also the reat books program isn't really for everyone....would that explain the low graduation rate?

Sounds correct to me. Their admissions department told me that the Great Books program doesn't work for many people, and those people are even encouraged by the college itself to transfer if they can't handle the workload. And Reed is indeed very difficult, and the graduation rate is most likely a reflection of that.

This information would have been much more useful if it had not penalized schools that students transfer out of. That way it would have been obvious which schools students happen to flunk out of frequently and which simply have horrible academic conditions.

[yorkyfan]

Although you can always justify a low 4 (or 6) year graduation rate (part-timers, students not prepared, 3-2 programs, demanding curriculum , etc.), a low rate should give students and parents (who are footing the bill!) pause! You should definitely investigate further and understand the reasons.

And I do think a 4 year grad rate coupled with SAT averages of admitted students can tell you a lot about the school's commitment to undergraduate education. When we investigated schools for our B/C, mid-500 SAT student, we looked very closely at 4 year grad rates. We only had 4 years worth of tuition saved up, so we wanted to send our kid to a school that maximized his chances for graduation in 4 years!

And we did find some outstanding candidates. These schools took 60-80% of the kids that applied. The kids typically had 500 - 550 SATs. And the schools managed to graduate 70% or more in 4 years!! John Carroll is an example. And we did notice that many Catholic universities did a wonderful job of graduating average students. I think it is easy for an Ivy to take a 4.0, high SAT student and graduate him or her. But it is much tougher to take a C student and graduate him. So I truly admire those schools that are having success doing that. They are the true "gems" of our higher education system.

[bubbaNU]

First post:
My take is if you can find a good job at any time you should go for it. I’ve been in IT for the last 11 years and know a number of folks that have little if no college experience and have become great developers making good money. Higher education will always be there to finish later if you so desire.

[sakky]

If a segment of those applicants can't handle the work and have to drop out, then so be it. From this perspective, it's better to admit too many applicants, and give the marginal students a chance to prove themselves, than it is to deny admission to those students who may be late bloomers and who will succeed at college level work.

I think you've unfairly minimized the downside of bringing in students who won't graduate.

Firstly, going to college is not cost-free. People have to pay to go to college, regardless of whether they graduate or not. Universities, as nonprofit organizations that are supposed to benefit society, ought to assess whether it is truly ethical to take the money of somebody who is probably unlikely to graduate. This is particularly the case when the student comes from a poorer family, for taking money from such a student if you truly believe that he won't actually graduate is, I would argue, deeply immoral.

One way to ameliorate this problem is a suggestion I made before: don't charge students who don't graduate. Only charge the student at the end, when he graduates. Granted, some processes will have to be put in place for those students who transfer credits to another school (hence graduating from a different school), but the general working principle would be not to make students worse off by consigning them to debt without granting them a degree.

The other problem regards those students who perform poorly. Academic records stay with you for life. If you perform poorly at a given school, no other respectable school will want to take you as a transfer student, such that you may have actually been better off not having even going to school at all.

As a case in point, I know a guy who went to Berkeley, flunked out, and as a result, couldn't even go to UCDavis - a school that he was admitted to right out of high school - because Davis didn't want to admit a transfer candidate who had flunked out of his previous school. The guy would have been better off if he had never gone to Berkeley at all and instead headed straight to the workforce, for he would then be able to apply and be admitted to Davis purely on the strength of his high school record.

One way to solve this problem is for the school to simply cancel the academic record of any student who drops out. If the guy isn't going to graduate from Berkeley anyway, who cares what his Berkeley grades were? Let him walk away with a clean slate. Pretend as if he had never gone to Berkeley at all.

However, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for those remedies to occur. Hence, the best solution is for the school to simply not admit those students in the first place. Admittedly, that probably won't happen either, which then behooves the student to take pause in considering attending a school that exhibits a low graduation rate. When you're the guy who's stuck with a mountain of debt and whose academic record is rent asunder, nobody - least of all the school - is going to rescue you.

[ee33ee]

sakky, I think it's understood that the downsides of admitting an unsuccessful student are severe. Debt and a tarnished record are just the tangibles, set against other negatives like wasted time, personal disappointment, social stigma, etc. But that has to be weighed against the downsides of rejecting students who would have succeeded, which is a necessary consequence of tightening admissions criteria.

It's undeniable that a college degree confers many advantages. Some are obvious, like career openings and higher salaries; some are more subtle (yet just as powerful), like social status and confidence in one's abilities. All told, these advantages can yield incalculable benefits over the course of a lifetime. Perhaps, when these are taken into consideration, a different story should be told. Yes, it is depressing to think about the financially unstable candidate who takes a risk and leaves with several thousand in debt and a year or two wasted. But maybe the real tragedy is the borderline candidate who is rejected and cannot strive towards the aforementioned opportunities.

Colleges should hedge their chances, but they cannot do this without keeping the pay-offs in mind. It seems that the pay-offs of a successful college education are far greater than the pay-offs of averting a failed one. Let's take as an example a school with a 30% graduation rate, which I'm sure many in this thread find horrifying. The average drop-out can expect to lose, say, $50k in tuition and the opportunity cost of working over 2 years. But then let's say the average graduate can expect to increase his lifetime earnings by $200k. Then it seems perfectly acceptable for two students to drop-out for every student who graduates. In fact, it takes four drop-outs to balance the positive of one graduate, so it would actually be prudent for the school to keep lowering their admissions criteria until their graduation rate reaches 20%. We should leave the doors open wider!

And this analysis could be had in other forms -- cost/benefit to society, cost/benefit to mind, etc. -- with similar conclusions I believe.

Pardon me if my scenario is unrealistic. I'm just a fresh college student. But I hope this gets across my point that unseemly statistics may be commensurate with the unevenness of pay-offs, and that this seems to be the case with graduation rates.

[Ray192]

And we did find some outstanding candidates. These schools took 60-80% of the kids that applied. The kids typically had 500 - 550 SATs. And the schools managed to graduate 70% or more in 4 years!! John Carroll is an example. And we did notice that many Catholic universities did a wonderful job of graduating average students. I think it is easy for an Ivy to take a 4.0, high SAT student and graduate him or her. But it is much tougher to take a C student and graduate him. So I truly admire those schools that are having success doing that. They are the true "gems" of our higher education system.

Except, how much of this success is due to, say, teaching effectiveness, and how much is due to grade inflation/lack of rigor? I don't think they do a great job if they just take some money, give everybody As and send people out the door without much in terms of actual learning.

I think rigorous and tough programs should also be respected as well, even if their rigor is too much for certain members for their class.

[yorkyfan]

Ray192,
I agree that once you have a candidate school that looks good on paper like John Carroll, you want to investigate more deeply the academic rigor. We looked closely at the academic requirements, we googled the professors' names to see what they had published and compared this information with higher ranked schools. And John Carroll came out well as a rigorous liberal arts school. (Just for the record, our kid does not go there.)

On the other hand, Reed's statistics should set off alarm bells to any parent contemplating paying $50,000/year to send their kid there. Reed accepts about 30% of students who apply and admitted students have SATs in the range of 660-760 CR, 630-710M. These are bright capable students, yet only 60% of them graduate in 4 years. That is ridiculous!!! I think all parents and students should be outraged and demand better from Reed. Comparable institutes to Reed (that are equally rigorous) do a much, much better job of graduating students in 4 years.

And the fact that John Carroll can take students with SATs 100 points lower than Reed's admits and graduate over 70% of them in 4 years should be a source of embarrassment for Reed staff. Perhaps they should visit Cleveland and see what JC is doing right!

[northeastmom]

If you have a student who is male, or a URM, you might want to investigate the 4 year graduation rate for those students.

I just looked at a school with a 4 year graduation rate of 58%. For female students the average 4 year grad rate is 65%. The male grad rate is just 47% in 4 years. Big difference!

[vossron]

"These are bright capable students, yet only 60% of them graduate in 4 years. That is ridiculous!!! I think all parents and students should be outraged and demand better from Reed. Comparable institutes to Reed (that are equally rigorous) do a much, much better job of graduating students in 4 years."

This argument presumes that graduation is the end point. Reed is one of the grad-school-prep colleges; 65% go to grad school, 20% earn a PhD. Reed's rigor is commonly compared to Swarthmore's and UChicago's. It is common to take time off to recharge; the six-year rate is 77%, still low, but Reed is improving: the six-year rate of the 1995 cohort was 70%.

As a Reed parent, I am big fan; Reed was perfect for our just-graduated daughter.