College Graduation Rates: What they tell Prospective Students Every year, millions of people evaluate U.S. colleges and universities. Some are college-bound students, some are parents, some are school counselors, and others are journalists and publishers. In making their selections, they may consider dozens of factors, some easy to quantify and rank, others almost impossible to measure with any degree of precision or certainty. For example, although many people are convinced that attending a college or university with an exceptional reputation…an institution like Harvard, Princeton or Stanford…offers students significant advantages. However, others cite a study that concluded that students with the academic profile necessary to be admitted to a high profile, highly selective college will ultimately be as successful as the graduates of those institutions even if they are educated elsewhere. Wherever the truth lies, perhaps somewhere in the middle, the fact is that even if attending an elite college gives students an edge, it is not an edge that can be measured accurately.
What can be measured precisely are the average spending per student, the percentage of faculty members with terminal degrees, mean faculty salaries, the academic profiles of entering classes, the amount of institutional financial aid awarded to students, and the graduate school and employment placement rate of graduates. The percentage of alumni donors is another easily discoverable statistic that many find meaningful. Today, however, let’s focus on another metric…six-year graduation rates. In recent history, a lot of attention has been given to six year graduation rates because of their perceived value in measuring how well colleges serve their students and an important component in determining their overall ratings in the increasing number of publications and websites which rank colleges. Graduation rates are pretty easy to obtain, but what do they really tell us? And, why are most data collectors concentrating on six year, not four or five year graduation rates? To answer those questions, we must understand that college students are a very different demographic than they once were. The average college student is in his/her mid-twenties. Many are married, some are parents, and many work significant hours. As a result, students frequently carry less than a full academic load. In addition, more students than ever require developmental coursework and it’s not unusual for students to attend three or more colleges before earning a degree. For all of these reasons, a pretty small percentage of students earn a degree in four years. There are exceptions. At highly selective, residential colleges four year colleges, graduation rates are often in the nineties, because students are apt to be especially well prepared high-achievers with no familial financial responsibilities and generous financial aid packages. After looking at statistics for years, it was determined that while few students earn a degree within four years of matriculating, almost all students who do earn a degree have completed it within six years. As a result, it is six year graduation rates which are most often used to measure student success and to compare colleges. So, what do college graduation rates really tell us? Sometimes, not a lot. It’s pretty much axiomatic that the more selective the college, the higher the graduation rate, so when we see that Harvard and Yale have higher graduation rates than the flagship public universities in their respective states, nobody is surprised. The facts that the state universities have a higher graduation rates than their for-profit neighbors is also not very instructive. But, if you compare colleges of the same ilk, graduation rate statistics may be telling. Because there are so many variables that can be used in comparing colleges, certainty is tough to come by, but if you look at five colleges with comparable admission standards and comparable per student expenditures and you find one with a significantly higher or lower graduation rate than others, you may have learned something important. To see some interesting statistics on graduation rates and to learn more about what those statistics can tell you, visit this page, put together by The Chronicle of Higher Education.