A different sort of ranking

hoedown
Thu, 19 May 2005 10:34:03 +0000

One of the interesting bits of research that has come out of the higher education community is the “expected” graduation rate.

That is, with many of the elite colleges discussed here, a high graduation rate isn’t just a function of the school’s attention to undergraduate education.

Some of these kids would succeed anywhere. These colleges recruit driven, ambitious students who were bound to graduate and do so on time.

That’s where the expected graduation rate comes in. They’ve calculated the graduation rate you’d expect given the calibre of student recruited. US News employs this and compares it to the actual graduation rate. If the graduation rate is higher, then the college is doing an exceptional job keeping students enrolled and getting them to graduate. If their graduation rate is lower, then they’re losing/delaying more students than predicted, either by transfer, drop out, stop out, or lack of progress. Factors like the college environs and the adequacy of financial aid may play a role (in either direction). It may also have to do with how well (or not) the college has communicated itself, its workload, its social life, etc, to students before they enroll.

In that light, Holy Cross is even more impressive. Hamilton, Trinity, and Colgate are also way up there. Not only do they have a high graduation rate, but they outperform what would be expected. My own alma mater (small woman’s college) doesn’t look so hot–clearly they’re losing a lot of students to transfer. Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd are some of the top-ranked colleges which don’t measure up as well, either.