I’m confused about what the retention rate is supposed to tell us. I’ve always considered it primarily a measure of student satisfaction; i.e., few students decide to transfer or go home to seek other options because they’re happy at a given university. Do we know that many or most students at Mount St. Mary’s who leave do so because they can’t cut it there? (Maybe it’s Mount St. Mary’s that can’t cut it with them.)
@frazzled1 - That’s a good point. What if the attrition is because students are transferring to better schools? Or now, if they’re transferring to get away from a President who talks about sticking Glocks to the heads of “bunnies” who are perceived to be weak? I’d pull my kid from that ish in a heartbeat.
^Not sure what the “eliteness” of the school has to do with anything?
Not eliteness. More schools whose primary mission is serving students who may not have been well-prepared by prior K-12 educations may provide more information to instructors in order to help them teach/mentor such students more effectively.
Colleges with low selectivity/open admissions policies and missions which are focused on admitting and helping marginal/remedial students overcome the inadequate educational preparation they received during K-12 as opposed to colleges which don’t have that as their main mission.
Do you mean retention of frosh to the second year, or graduation rates?
It is likely that both are related to admission selectivity, since stronger students are less likely to flunk out or struggle so much that they drop out because they do not think they will succeed.
As noted in reply #21, Mount Saint Mary’s University has higher graduation rates than predicted by the frosh entrance characteristics.
You have two data points - hardly enough to make conjectures about. I really think you are stretching it here.
Note how he uses words like “kindest” and “ethical” when he is neither. This is the manipulative, CYA duplicity we see in those lacking in conscience. Normal people don’t talk about young people the way he did. He is a classic, ruthless CEO hired to improve the bottom line. The problem is that like many psychopaths he gave himself away by not recognizing and censoring his own misstep, and by rationalizing his behavior after the fact instead of apologizing for his rather egregious insensitivity. The board will now get exactly what they deserve for hiring someone who devalues humanity in favor of cold, hard cash and rankings.
Get past the language he used and listen to the message.
First:
This seems to be the first year since I joined CC that a lone parent hasn’t posted that their engineering major student is flunking out of college.
How often are there posts on CC that parents do understand PLUS loans?
I know children of neighbors and relatives that graduated with a ‘C’ average from a TTT that are waiting tables and living in the parent’s basement with huge student loans.
So.
If a college has a way to identify a small number of students mid semester into freshman year are making minimal progress what is more ethical?
1: Throw them a life buoy (probation) and maybe they survive or maybe not. The maybe not’s leave a year or two later with $$$ in student loans and ??? future prospects. The maybe’s graduate.
- Offer nothing. The maybe's figure it out and graduate. The maybe not's? Who knows.
- Throw out a life raft. The maybe not's? Choice one: Push forward. Choice two: Accept a refund and a total do-over. The college refunds all monies. Students THINK about their options. CC for spring or wait until next fall semester.
There many reasons that the first semester at college can go awry. Props to the colleges that offer do-overs.
Reminds me of this:
Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
http://msmary.edu/academics/academic-calendar.html indicates that the college’s fall classes began 8/24/2015. The dismissal of 20-25 students in this plan was to be done by 9/25/2015, just a month (about a quarter of the semester) after classes start.
Another article on the situation: http://msmecho.com/2016/01/19/mount-presidents-attempt-to-improve-retention-rate-included-seeking-dismissal-of-20-25-first-year-students/
Since part of the criteria for dismissal was based on a survey given during orientation, shouldn’t the college have really put the survey questions in the admission application and then just not admitted those applicants whose answers fit the profile of students who are expected to flunk out? (The accuracy or not of such profiling is another topic entirely.)
What’s more ethical than forcing kids out 6 classes into the semester?
Not giving students a survey under the guise of self-help that’s secretly intended to cull the herd.
Not making the professors, who are supposed to be teaching all students and giving them every opportunity to succeed, into hunters looking for the weakest link to meet a predetermined quota.
Not assuming that administrators who’ve known these young people for a grand total of 21 days know them, and what they’re capable of, better than the parents who sent them there.
Not assuming college personnel know better than families what they can afford.
Memo to self:
Don’t do surveys
In terms of numbers, dismissing 25 frosh before the 9/25/2015 deadline would improve frosh-to-soph retention by at most 3% (if all of the 25 dismissed frosh were those who would have flunked or dropped out – it is not certain that the profile of students who will flunk or drop out does not have false positives), based on the incoming class size of about 594 from http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1059 .
A do-over would be allowing the student to re-enroll after somehow becoming better prepared, but I didn’t see any suggestion that the President was offering that. Instead, IMHO, he was simply kicking them to the curb. Now the student’s left with no job, scrambling to make a plan, and with a damaged school record. What school would admit a freshman who’s been identified as a probable academic failure by another college? Academic probation exists for a reason. Lots of kids struggle in their first semester. I know a lot of adults who graduated from college and graduate school who had lousy freshman first semesters. To punish a kid for the probability they’re going to fail is unfair.
If this President wants to prevent kids from failing at this school the place he should be looking is at his own admissions department and how they screen for kids who aren’t likely to do well in college as part of the admission process, before admitting them. But then, I don’t really believe this was a plan to help kids.
In his words,
Thousands of students every year, maybe millions, struggle in their first semester. Or in the first month. Some continue to; some find their way and finish the semester okay. Some have a lousy first semester, get their act together, and then do okay after that.
Many, many CC parents have said about themselves that this was true, or about their own kids, but they overcame and became successful.
I’ve worked in programs with struggling students for decades, and the idea that it’s a kindness to put them out on their behind is ludicrous. Not after one month. A school that admits marginal students should have programs in place to support them. I worked for a TRIO–SSS program which is a federal program to support retention. The things we did can apply to all students–tutoring, counseling, help with figuring out FA problems, study habit workshops, support in registration issues, guidance to finding other necessary support on campus such as for psychological issues, ESL, LD, etc etc etc, on and on. A school that cares about students gives them a chance to succeed.
Schools are NOT a business. They provide a service. The goal of a business is profit. The goal of a school is successful students.
Does that mean that there are no students who will fail even with support? Of course not. But it’s ludicrous to assume anyone can tell that in one month.
And don’t even get me started on the actual language used.
I don’t actually think of the students as cuddly bunnies.
A lot of posters here are mistaken in believing that the job of a college president is to act in the interest of the students.
I think what bugs me most about this is that it’s ostensibly a Catholic school. While that doesn’t mean it’s ok to have no standards, it generally does mean that one doesn’t talk about one’s admitted students (or anyone) disparagingly, much less use metaphors that include holding guns to the heads of animals. Catholics may differ over what it means to be a “good Catholic” - and I’m the first to admit that I’m not a perfect one - but I’d sort of expect there to be some sort of consensus that says that what Newman was trying to do there was incredibly unethical, and not in keeping with the mission of the school.
"The Mount is a community where doors are held open by people you never met but who soon become your best friends. The people at the Mount genuinely care for you, they care that you succeed, whether inside or outside of the classroom. They care about your family and friends. They care about your classes that you are taking, your job interviews and your applications to graduate school. They care what you are doing now and ten years into the future.”
Um. Yeah.
I wonder if people would have gotten nearly as upset if the gun reference was left out.
I would have. The language is offensive, but the substance of the message is egregious.