They are not useful for predicting your own child’s graduation chances at that school. But they are useful for understanding what the social atmosphere at the school is probably like. If there’s a lot of churn in the student body, that’s bad for social and extracurricular continuity, and that affects me even if my own odds of graduating are 95%.
There are also benefits to the difference in social mix at the CSU’s – so the affect is not necessarily negative. The average age of the student body tends to be older, with more non-traditional students, including more students who enter at an older age, such as students who opted to do a stint in the military before college. That leads to a more mature student body overall - less of a party school atmosphere. So a less school-centric social atmosphere – between the working students, the older students, and the commuter students who still live at home- it is less likely that the students do their socializing on campus. But for any parent whose kid messed up at college because their dorm life was one continual party-- that can be an advantage. And the CSU campuses do have students who get very involved in campus organizations and student government - plenty of opportunities for that.
The CSU’s do have problems, primarily due to funding levels – but when I attended my son’s graduation, I saw a whole lot of proud students graduating in a stadium. (On of those interminably long ceremonies which cause parents to wish their kids had majored in Anthropology.) It’s just a different mix.
In addition to what others have said about CSU students often needing to work part-time, the CSUs to accept students who need to take remedial classes in math, English or both before taking college-level courses in those areas. Systemwide, about 57% of freshmen CSU students needed no remediation in 2013. So, about 43% needed remediation in one or both subjects.
Obviously, needing to take remedial classes slows down graduation or makes it less likely. So, if the kid the OP is working with not need remediation, that’s one less factor to worry about.
You can see the rates of remediation needed for individual CSUs at http://asd.calstate.edu/performance/proficiency.shtml
If you are asking for our personal opinions, here is mine. Graduation rate at specific school has nothing to do with the success of a specific student at this school. NONE. The success of a specific student will solely depend on the efforts of this student and absolutley NOTHING ELSE. If a person has a goal of an A in every single class (and many in certain academic tracks have to have such a goal to be successfull at the end, so I do not see why not everybody has such a goal), if such a person has a plan how to accomplish this goal, why this student would not graduate and what his specific goal / plan has to do with the graduation rate at this college?
It never occurred to us to check the graduation rate at any college, when D. applied to them. She simply said: “I will do fine anywhere” and opted to attend in-state public that matched her personality and very wide range of goals and interests including potential ones. The graduation rate was not even any criteria in her selection and neither was college ranking. We forgot to check either. The result - D. graduated with college GPA = 3.98 and had a great selection of Medical Schools that accepted her.
Graduation rates is a useful outcome measurement for colleges/universities. It’s for answering the question, “How is the university performing and can it do better?”.
Institutions can have policies, programs and resources that impact graduation rates. Can CSU-LA do better? Sure it can. Maybe hiring more advisors, make it easier to enroll in critical track classes, fund programs that target at risk students (say low SES/URM STEM majors), etc.
Should someone take graduation rate into account when picking a college? Maybe, it’s one factor at of many, but it’s not a key driver for most folks. A low graduation rate may mean a college does an poor job of supporting students (due to a lack of funding, etc.) and implies a certain academic environment. Nothing wrong with checking out grad rates, but it’s just one factor in many, and it’s usual far less important than cost and fit.
@Gator88NE, though if you put in carrot and sticks tied to graduation rate, that could lead to perverse incentives.
So a school that typically enrolls high-risk (of flunking out) kids may stop taking them in altogether; or just graduate everyone even if they are barely literate. That may not actually be better for the community that a school traditionally served.
For all we know, CSU-LA is actually doing a stellar job and has done the very best it can with the entering students that it is given.
@PurpleTitan That would support @fractalmstr point about metrics being meaningless without context. But then again, you have to avoid paralysis through analysis, by using the data and understanding it’s not perfect and not always 100% comparable.
Except that it doesn’t.
@PurpleTitan said it well - some schools may in fact be doing an excellent job, despite having low graduation rates. If CSU-LA had a 95% 4 or 6 year graduation rate, one might question the quality of the academics. A low graduation rate is not necessarily a bad thing… but it is important to find out the reason(s) for those low rates.
Imperfect data is one thing, but graduation rate data are missing critical context. Its a superficial metric at best… like acceptance rate.
"So a school that typically enrolls high-risk (of flunking out) kids may stop taking them in altogether; or just graduate everyone even if they are barely literate. That may not actually be better for the community that a school traditionally served.
For all we know, CSU-LA is actually doing a stellar job and has done the very best it can with the entering students that it is given."
For this reason, the USNWR rankings grade schools on how well they do actually graduating students as compared to what the expected graduation rate is given the demographics of their students. For example, UVA does a good job graduating 93% of its students when only 88% is predicted. +5
Duke is even. WUSTL is -1. MIT is -2. NYU is -5. Case Western is -8.
Penn State is +9.
Rutgers destroys everyone:
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2012/11/01/examining-predicted-vs-actual-college-graduation-rates
PSU is actually +17 (though I don’t know if the heavy number of transfers from the branch PSU’s throws off anything)…
The Rutgers campus at the top of that ranking is the Newark campus, not the flagship New Brunswick campus.
Rutgers-Newark 6-year graduation is 68%.
Rutgers-New Brunswick graduation rate is 80%.
Clearly these campuses have some extraordinary efforts to graduate students.
Some interesting facts about Rutgers-Newark:
Undergraduate part-time: 19%, undergraduate full-time: 81%.
SAT CR 25th percentile: 460, 75th: 550
SAT Math: 550, 608
SAT Writing: 480, 560
Asian: 22%, Black-African American: 18%, Hispanic/Latino: 23%, White: 25%
http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=NJ&ct=1&ic=1&id=186399
Compare that to San Diego State University: 6-year graduation rate 66%
Undergraduate part-time: 11%, full-time: 89%
SAT CR 25th percentile: 480, 75th: 590
SAT Math: 500, 610
Asian: 14%, Black: 4%, Hispanic/Latino: 29%, White: 37%
http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=CA&ct=1&ic=1&fv=110510&pg=2&id=122409
SDSU is also praised for the efforts to graduate students.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jan/16/san-diego-state-graduation-rates-get-praise/
http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=74682