Education Study Reveals Much About Graduation Rates in U.S. Colleges
by Jim Brown
June 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - A new study documents "deep problems" in the graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities in America. It also highlights a historically black university in North Carolina that has a significantly higher graduation rate than its peer institutions.The analysis done by the Education Trust finds the overall college graduation rate in the U.S. is only 60 percent and only 50 percent for minority students. Senior policy analyst Kevin Carey -- author of the report A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year Colleges and Universities -- says given the increasing importance of a college education in a modern economy, the numbers are great cause for concern.
Carey says individual institutions vary widely in terms of their own graduation rates. Some do very well, while others have rates of 20 or 30 percent.
"And while to a certain extent institutional graduation rates " are tied to the academic standing of the students they enroll, less-selective institutions that enroll students with lower incoming SAT scores, for example, tend to have lower graduation rates than the more-selective institutions," he sys. "There are some institutions that are doing a much better job than others, even given similar kinds of students."
According to Carey, graduation rates have remained flat for decades -- but it presents a growing problem "because the consequences of not graduating from college are greater and greater," he says.
"The earnings differential between people with a college degree and [those] without one is growing," Carey explains. "With the cost of college going up, people are taking on more and more debt to attend college. So really the consequences are greater now than they ever have been."
Minority Graduation Rates
And even though the study brings good news -- specifically, that more students than ever are entering two- and four-year institutions -- it also exposes the extent of racial disparities in college graduation rates. According to the analysis, only 46 percent of African American and 47 percent of Hispanic students graduate within six years.
But the study found that a few institutions are making sure minority students graduate at the same rate as their other students. Such schools, Carey says, are very focused on graduation rates -- and making sure students have a smooth transition into higher education.
"We find that most college dropouts actually occur in the first year of college," he says. "Some students struggle to make that jump from high school to living on their own.
"These are also institutions that are very focused on not so much hand-holding the students but making sure that there are the proper academic supports in place -- that there's good counseling, that students have the courses that they need," Carey explains.
One of the schools cited in the report is Binghamton University, which has a six-year graduation rate of 79 percent. And Elizabeth City State University, a Historically Black University in North Carolina, must be doing something right.
The school, established in 1891, serves primarily first-generation college students from low-income families. Even though most of the school's incoming students score below average on the SAT, its median graduation rate is 53 percent -- a difference of 14 percentage points when compared to its peer institutions.
"We found that Elizabeth City was far out-performing other institutions that served similar student populations," Carey shares. "They talked to us about being very focused on these students, being very rigorous in terms of their academic expectations, for class attendance and grades -- so it's not as if they're lowering their standards; they're actually more focused."
The University of Northern Iowa (67 percent) and the University of California-Riverside (66 percent) were other schools noted for having far higher graduation rates than their peer institutions.
Carey says this is the first time the U.S. Department of Education has released disaggregated graduation rate data for every four-year college in the U.S.
