How much does a low graduation rate bother you?

MomLive
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:53:00 +0000

Students that have little or no financial and/or other support from family (or are underprepared for college) often drop in/out of school. Part-time one semester, full-time the next, work full-time so no classes the next, community college the next, etc, etc. This often leads to 6+ years from beginning to end.



Very common in large universities. The socioeconomic demographics are much more diverse than in a smaller school (especially the private schools). Those kids who come from stable backgrounds with the financial ability to attend school full-time are more likely to graduate within 4 years. For others, it can be very hard to do. I wouldn’t be overly concerned about it but checking on class availability is a good point.



When they raised admission requirements, the grad. rate went up. So an individuals high schoo lGPA & SAT scores seem to be better predictors of an individual students chances of graduating, than the college they attend;



If I remember correctly, part of Malcolm Gladwell’s argument against the USNWR rating system was that using the predicted graduation rate as a key metric was somewhat faulty because you would expect to see a high graduation rate at the more selective schools. Those kids tend to be higher-achieving and have already invested a lot of time and energy getting into those schools, so it’s unlikely they are going to fail to graduate. So saying Harvard has a 87% graduation rate tells you almost nothing. You would expect Harvard to have a high 4 year graduation rate.

Whereas, Flagship U might only have a 65% graduation rate but given the average GPA/SAT score they are doing a darn fine job of getting kids through school because the statistics would suggest that only 50% would graduate in 4 years. I’m heavily paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it.