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Why so low?
If you're interested in graduation rates, boy, was this your week. Yesterday, for instance, The Chronicle of Higher Education featured a "Special Report" on "Making College Graduation the Priority" and USA Today's Mary Beth Marklein published an attention-grabbing piece on a new book by William Bowen and others. Today, ACTA friend Rich Vedder has a characteristically interesting take on the issue over at Minding the Campus. Here's a snippet:
Let's look at a single university, the University of Texas (UT). At the UT flagship campus in Austin, they are proud of their 78 percent graduation rate after six years. What that does not reveal, however, is that fewer than half the students graduate in four years. Down the road at UT in San Antonio, the six-year graduation rate is a miserable 30 percent -while the four-year rate is in the single digits -7 percent. And it is even lower at UT El Paso. Looking at all public universities, whereas the six-year rate is around 55 percent, the four-year rate is under 30 percent -for every entering freshman who graduates in four years, there are more than two others that do not.Another reason why the already low graduation rates are perhaps an overstatement of the academic attainment of students is grade inflation. Very few persons flunk out of school these days. When I entered college over a half century ago, the average grade point average at American universities was around 2.5 -implying as many "C" grades were given as "B" grades. By the early 1990s, that average had risen to above 2.9, and today it is over 3.1 -more grades above "B" than below (according to gradeinflation.com) . Therefore, relatively few students today fail to meet minimal grade-point standards (usually around a 2.0 average).
Graduation rates are, by the way, one of the pieces of information supplied on ACTA's new college-guide website, WhatWillTheyLearn.com.
Posted by Charles Mitchell on September 10, 2009 at September 10, 2009 09:36 AM
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