Ranked National Universities With Low 6 Year Graduation Rates (2018 Stats)

Parents Forum
141

“6 years is 150% of the nominal time for a bachelor’s degree; it seems to be the usual method for measuring whether someone is likely to complete the degree at all.”

I think many of the engineering programs encourage or require co-ops which usually means that the students graduate in 4.5 or 5 years, so looking at 6-year seems fair, and for a lot of other reasons as well.

"I look at colleges with student bodies heavily slanted towards kids from privileged backgrounds and wonder why they aren’t graduating everyone in 6-8 years… "

Those colleges do pretty well wrt grad rates, most in the 90s. I just googled Harvard and one site said of the 1600-1700 entering freshman a few years back, 33 didn’t graduate in 6 years, of those, half transferred, a few are still there, the rest they assumed dropped out.

"Theoretically, if all things are equal all races would produce the same percentage of what you call “college ready” students, of top-percentage students, and of low-performing students.:

I don’t know if that’s going to happen, CA may be worse than Louisiana in terms of achievement gaps based on ACT, 73% of Asians are college ready, 71% whites, 26% Latino, 24% black.

"And theoretically, all public colleges in those states would have demographic percentages that match the percentages of their K-12 enrollments. "

That seems like a reasonable goal, if you include all public colleges, so in CA, it would be UCs, CSU and Cal Polys, maybe even the community colleges. I believe some of the recent data show Latinos being the largest ethnic group and in CA, in the 2019 hs class for the UCs, Latinos were the second largest group behind Asians.

142

It would be better if there were also 8 and 10 semester graduation rates, to account for students who may take more calendar years but not any more tuition-paying semesters of school due to co-ops or other gap semesters (however, attendance of a summer session at a semester system school should count as half a semester).

143

I don’t know if that’s the primary factor, but it’s a contributing factor.

144

@socaldad2002: Not accurate. I asked for proof of another’s claim about UNM’s placement & on-campus recruiting. That poster was unable to do so stating that the on-campus interview list had been withdrawn due to Covid-19. I replied that an even an old on-campus recruiting schedule would suffice. There has been no reply.

Again, UNM & NMSU are the most nationally prominent schools on the list as state flagships and as both have D-I sports and both are ranked National Universities.

Additionally, makes a comparison with the adjacent neighboring state of Arizona’s two state flagship (UArizona & ASU) schools relevant.

I believe that the two New Mexico state flagship ranked national universities can & should do better than sub-50% six year graduation rates (a measure used by the US Dept. of Education).

145

@blossom: If discussing those schools interests you, then feel free to start a thread on the topic. As presented by you, your focus is off topic for this thread dealing with ranked National Universities with sub-50% graduation rates.

146

@bluebayou: Could you elaborate on your post #136 above which you:

“deleted as IPEDS does not match CDS.”

147

OP not only started this thread, but was also poster #1-and from the very first post, OP’s agenda was clear: attack the NM schools while ignoring everything else. There has been nothing from OP since that time which has even approached being even minimally objective. Other universities have similar issues but OP ignores those completely(e.g. SIU-Carbondale).

It is pellucid that OP has some sort of personal animus against not only the New Mexico schools, but the entire state of New Mexico. As OP so blithely put it:

"I really do not want to denigrate UNM, but there is a reason that the state is known as “The Land of Entrapment”.

"FWIW: There is a reason that almost every year when the rankings of state educational systems is released that Mississipians say “Thank God for New Mexico”.

And a careful CC member may wonder: did they miss OP’s excoriation of Wayne State? After all, its grad rate was below UNM’s. Or his/her incisive commentary on SIU-Carbondale or CUNY or U of Missouri-Kansas City? Surely, s/he had volumes to say about each of these, right? After all, they have worse graduation rates than UNM.

Uh, no; not a peep about any of those schools-but volumes on U New Mexico.

Hardly an objective observer.

148

LOL. I have repeatedly made clear why UNM & NMSU are the most interesting on the list of 15 ranked National Universities with sub-50% graduation rates.

Additionally, with the state of the economy, many will search for generous scholarships based on pre-determined stats. UNM & NMSU offer such scholarships to both non-residents & internationals as well as to residents.

Too many diversionary posts & too little focus on solutions.

Excuses, diversions & accusations are not solutions & do not help this thread progress.

Hopefully, one obsessed poster can move on from the repeated personal attacks & focus on the subject of the thread.

149

It’s pretty amusing that quoting your own words is a “diversion(s)” and a “personal attack”.
Why continue this charade? This thread was created for one purpose: to provide you with a platform to attack New Mexico and its colleges. A more accurate title would have been “I don’t like New Mexico or its colleges”.

150

U of Colorado Denver is not a substitute for CC (there is actually a community college that shares the same campus) but is a business and engineering school. It is right downtown so many (MANY) of the students are full time workers and part time students, taking one or two classes per semester. It’s been changing a little over the last few years and now has dorms and is attracting younger full time students, but that wouldn’t show in the 6 year graduation rates.

151

I used to work at one of the schools on the list. It has a mission of access, and the student body has many students from non-typical backgrounds … older, working, part time, taking remedial classes, etc. The school is working hard to make positive changes, but it’s not a simple thing. There are many challenges, and there are no easy answers. Every answer involves money, it seems. And that is something this school does not have.

152

@Publisher
I suggest you take a look at the median family incomes for students at the universities in question. The income and mobility numbers below come from the New York Times diversity and income database. Unfortunately, the database lumps the listed Arizona schools together. The graduation rates are the rates you have stated in this thread.

New Mexico State University
Six year graduation rate - 47%
Median family income - $48,800
Share of students that move up two or more income quintiles - 25%

University of New Mexico
Six year graduation rate - 49%
Median family income - $67,200
Share of students that move up two or more income quintiles - 19%

Arizona State and Northern Arizona and University of Arizona
Six year graduation rate of Arizona State- 69%
Median family income - $104,500
Share of students that move up two or more income quintiles - 14%

If you investigate family income versus graduation rate, I believe you will find a strong correlation. It is not difficult to understand why, as students from higher income families are less likely to be first generation students, have greater financial resources available, and are more likely to come from stronger K-12 schools.

Looking at the NYT data, it appears that the New Mexico schools are actually doing a better job at moving students up the income ladder than the Arizona schools.

I am sure the administrations at the New Mexico schools desire to have higher graduation rates. You have named the poor K-12 education in New Mexico as a factor for the graduation rates, but the universities do not have control over K-12. They could also increase rates by providing more financial aid, but school funding is controlled by the state legislature.

Perhaps comparing colleges with similar entering students (grades, test scores, percentage of first gen, family income, quality of K-12) and similar funding levels instead of those that appear on an arbitrary list would be more meaningful. You might find the New Mexico schools are doing a good job, given the constraints they are operating under.

153

I haven’t read much of the thread, so I am likely repeating comments. Graduation rate is primarily a reflection of the student body, rather the college. A high graduation rate primarily relates to admitting students who are likely to graduate, rather than what I’d consider to be a reflection of the college quality.

However, there are some additional factors beyond the student body that influence graduation rate. For example, a college that has a high quality grant based financial aid may have fewer students who fail to graduate for financial reasons than a college where a large portion of the student body struggle to pay for college. Colleges where a large portion of students do 5+ year programs, such as co-ops and co-terms also tend to have lower graduation rates than expected. When a graduation rate differs from expectation based on the student body, it’s good to review why.

USNWR is an arbitrary ranking system whose ranking criteria includes graduation rate, among other factors… many of which are well correlated with endowment size. If a college ranks well in USNWR in spite of having a lower graduation rate, then it most certainly does better than typical in some of the other criteria besides graduation rate. If you subscribe to USNWR, you can review the specific non-graduation rate criteria that New Mexico does especially well in.

Regarding UNM, some example actual and predicted graduation rate based on student body characteristics and actual 6-year grad stats for different groups, as reported on the UNM website at https://oia.unm.edu/facts-and-figures/graduation-rates.html are below. Graduation rate is well correlated with HSGPA and ACT stats. I did not list the small sample of extreme outliers at the upper end, which had a lower graduation rate than expected… perhaps due to non-standard weighted HSGPA system or transfers. There were also notable racial and gender differences.

–UNM 6-year Grad Rate for 2013 Cohort–
3.9-4.1 GPA and 29-31 ACT – Predicted 80%, Actual was 96%
3.5-3.9 GPA and 25-28 ACT – Predicted 68%, Actual was 73%
3.0-3.5 GPA and 20-24 ACT – Predicted 49%, Actual was 51%
2.5-3.0 GPA and 15-19 ACT – Predicted 30%, Actual was 32%
1.7-2.5 GPA and 8-14 ACT – Predicted 16%, Actual was 0% (small sample)

International – Predicted 49%, Actual was 79%
Asian Females – Predicted 61%, Actual was 75%
Black Males – Predicted 40%, Actual was 36%
Native American – Predicted 29%, Actual was 27%

154

I don’t believe that. Sometimes you start a general discussion about something, and it goes off on a bit of a tangent or delves more deeply into a certain aspect of that discussion. The sub-discussion about NM schools was an example of that.

I also don’t believe the schools listed are inferior schools. As mentioned by some, much of the 6-year graduation rates have more to do with the demographics of the student body than the quality of the school.