How much does a low graduation rate bother you?

ucbalumnus
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:29:45 +0000

HPuck35:

Don’t know the numbers of part time students at my son’s school, but the impression is that it was very low. My son took less than a full course load only 2 quarters (out the the 15 he was there for) and one was his last quarter where he was completing his senior project, which had quickly turned into a time sink.



When I went to university many years ago, the 4-year graduation rate was much lower than it is now. It did seem that there were a lot of “full time” students taking only 12 or 13 credit units per semester (as opposed to the average of 15 that one would take to graduate in 8 semesters). Perhaps because costs were so much less then, there was less incentive for students to avoid delays in graduation.

There have been other changes, some due to deliberate school policy (curriculum changes, student course registration procedures), and some due to external factors (greater popularity resulting in greater admissions competition resulting in entering freshmen with more AP credit and less need for remedial courses), which also likely helped improve 4-year graduation rates (the school wants students to graduate as quickly as possible – an extra semester for an in-state student means an additional semester of in-state tuition subsidy).