Tag: college completion

National Report Finds Overlooked Causes For Increasing Graduation.

By Carla Rivera

Colleges should examine a wider set of social, economic and personal characteristics to determine how they can help students remain in school and graduate, a new report has found.
Aside from SAT scores and high school grade point averages, students’ success in college relies on a number of other factors — often overlooked — that more accurately predict whether they will stay in school, according to the report scheduled for release Tuesday by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

Using information from a national survey of college freshmen in public and private institutions as well as graduation data, the report found, for example, that students who visit a college before enrolling, participate in clubs and other activities and those who have used the Internet for research and homework are more likely to complete a degree earlier than others. The costs of attending a college and the institution’s size also contribute to students’ success, the report found.
Overall graduation rates are up from a decade ago — nearly four in 10 students (39%) graduate in four years today compared to 36% of students who started college in 1994, the report showed. But 56.4% of students now take five years to graduate.
Disparities in graduation rates by ethnicity and gender persist and the gaps are increasing, according to the report. First-generation students are especially at a disadvantage: Only 27.4% of these students earn a degree after four years compared to 42% of students whose parents attended college.
“The message to colleges is to use as much information as possible about their incoming students to assess what their probabilities are in terms of completion and think about services and programs that need to be addressed,” said Sylvia Hurtado, director of the research institute and one of the report’s authors.
(Lower in article)The report found that private schools graduate more students in four years than public institutions. But the study suggests that much of that success is because private schools are more selective in the types of students they enroll. But public universities, which are likely to enroll more low-income and first-generation students, graduate more of their students than would be expected, the report also found.

New Comprehensive Report On College Completion In USA

For the past six months, Complete College America has been compiling data from 33 states to produce a report that paints – for the first time ever – a comprehensive picture of today’s college student, the challenges students face and the reasons why they are not completing their degrees and certificates.

You won’t want to miss the story in this morning’s New York Times about the report and what it means.

New Survey Of College Completion And Value Of College

“One Degree of Separation: How Young Americans Who Don’t Finish College See Their Chances for Success” provides compelling insight into the barriers young adults face when considering higher education. The study compares the perceptions of young people who completed a college degree and those who obtained only a high school diploma. It found that many lack critical information necessary to further their educations, such as how to identify and apply for financial aid. Disturbingly, 72 percent of those have only a high school degree were unable to identify the FAFSA – the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The survey examined the views of a random sample of more than 600 young adults aged 26 to 34 years old, both those who completed either a college degree or postsecondary certificate and those whose highest credential is a high school diploma.

The report is available for download at www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/one-degree-of-separation.pdf. Researchers also found a growing skepticism about whether college is worth it, especially among those students who need to borrow money to pay for it. Only 37 percent of those with only a high school diploma “strongly agree” that, even if you have to take out a loan, going to college is worth it in the long run.

Yet those with only a high school education also have a darker view of their economic future. Only 36 percent of high school graduates say it’s “very likely” they’ll be financially secure in their lifetime, compared to 55 percent of college graduates.

Nationally, fewer than half of students who enter four-year colleges complete a degree in six years. At community colleges, only 20 percent complete with a two-year degree in three years. This report examines in depth the outlook of the non-graduating majority.

“One Degree of Separation” is the third in a series of Public Agenda surveys probing young people’s attitudes on higher education and college completion. Previous reports, also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, can be found at www.publicagenda.org/theirwholelivesaheadofthem.

Fewer Options, More Structure May Improve College Completion

Fewer choices may actually result in improved student outcomes
Complete College America President Stan Jones is an advocate of fewer post-secondary program options, more course structure, and shorter time frames for degree completion. A New York Times article describes his standpoint: “too much choice and flexibility provides little more than the freedom to fail.”
nytimes.com

Obama Proposes Small programs For College Completion

On Tuesday, March 22, Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a 23-page “toolkit” (PDF) of seven low- or no-cost policies governors can employ to improve college completion rates, along with state targets (PDF) for meeting President Obama’s 2020 goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. The toolkit includes recommendations to set state college completion goals, embrace performance funding and reach out to adults who have completed some college credits but who have not yet obtained a degree. The vice president also called on each governor to host a college completion summit and announced a $20 million grant program under the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE)’s Comprehensive Program for states seeking to improve college success and productivity.

In addition, the Obama administration’s FY2012 budget proposal (PDF) includes a $123 million “First in the World” incentive for programs that contain tuition, improve college completion rates and help students complete college in a timely manner. The budget proposal also recommends a $50 million College Completion Incentive Grant program that would fund states and schools for systemic reforms that generate better student outcomes. Congress will consider this request as part of the FY2012 budget process.

Gates Funds State Competition For College Completion

Starting today, Governors from all 50 states are invited to take up the Completion Innovation Challenge, a new competitive grant program from Complete College America with funding support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

States that demonstrate a commitment to develop and deploy innovative, state-wide strategies to substantially increase college completion are eligible to earn one of ten $1 million, 18-month implementation grants.

Complete College America aims to leverage the Completion Innovation Challenge grants to inspire states to new thinking and action in key policy areas essential for real and lasting impact:

• Shifting to Performance Funding to reward for more student success, not just higher headcounts.

• Reducing Time-to-Degree to accelerate achievement, prevent damaging delays, and cut costs.

• Restructuring Delivery for Today’s Students to help the new majority of students balance the jobs they need with the higher education they desire.

• Transforming Remediation to move students into first-year, full-credit classes as quickly as possible so precious time, motivation and money are not lost.

• Deploying Transformative Technology to customize, accelerate and support student learning for added convenience, efficiency and affordability. 

Colleges Try To Increase Graduation Rates By Bringing Back Former Students

Bringing Adults Back to College: Designing and Implementing a Statewide Concierge Model
This brief details efforts by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and their work with six states – Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota and South Dakota – to identify students who have earned a substantial amount of college credits but have not returned to complete their degree.

College Completion Will Lag Without Better Leadership At All Levels

From Gay Clyburn of Carnegie Foundation:

A LACK OF LEADERSHIP
Between them, Patrick M. Callan, Jane Wellman and Dennis P. Jones have seen close-up plenty of incomplete and unsuccessful efforts to improve higher education. And as veterans of the higher education policy landscape, they have well-developed reputations as — depending on your perspective — constructive critics or never satisfied “lamenters.” The latest exhortation from these three wise people of higher education policy and their organizations — the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (Callan), the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability (Wellman), and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (Jones) — is likely to reinforce those reputations. In a report published today in the public policy center’s National CrossTalk the three groups argue that the lofty college completion goal that has emerged as the closest thing to a national higher education strategy in a half century will not succeed without much more aggressive leadership than national, state and higher education leaders have shown so far.

Arizona 20% College Completion Rate Alarms State Officials

The study by the Arizona Board of Regents suggests that the state needs to increase its efforts in K-12 to get more students into college and that colleges need to increase their graduation rates. Studies have shown that college degrees are increasingly required in the workforce and that workers with degrees earn more money over a lifetime than those without.

The report provides a glimpse for the first time of what happens to Arizona high-school students after they graduate, even if they move or attend college out of state. Using federal and state data from colleges nationwide, the regents tracked several classes of high-school graduates in Arizona, beginning with 49,277 graduates in the 2003-04 school year. As of September, only 20 percent had graduated with a certificate or college degree.

Fifty-three percent had never gone to college, and 27 percent took college courses but hadn’t graduated. The Class of 2004-05 fared about the same five years after graduation. The study, called the Arizona Student Pipeline Report, can’t be compared nationally because only a handful of states tracks high-school graduates in this much detail.

Officials say several factors are contributing to the low percentages. High schools need to do a better job preparing students for college, and community colleges and universities need to focus more on helping students finish their degrees.

Some officials hope that changes made in recent years, such as increasing math and science requirements in high school and adding advisers and other support in the freshman year, will pave the way for improved college attendance and completion.

If the picture doesn’t brighten, Arizona “will not be able to compete with other states or internationally because we simply will not have the workforce we need,” said John Haeger, president of Northern Arizona University.

The findings in the report echo other studies that have led to calls for reforming the state’s education system.

For years, Arizona has lagged the national average in the percentage of people with college degrees. In the state, 25.3 percent of adults 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 27.5 percent nationally, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures.

The regents study, scheduled to be discussed today at their meeting in Tucson, could affect policy decisions for K-12, community-college and university systems.

Regent Ernest Calderon, who commissioned the report when he was regents president last year, said he was surprised that only one in five students obtained a certificate or degree six years later.

“What we are saying is 80 percent of our youth, our future, is service industry. We’re destining people for a service industry,” he said.

He said he isn’t optimistic in the short term, given likely state budget cuts spurred by a sluggish economy. Somehow, despite the challenges, universities have to increase access to a college degree as well as the success rate, he said.

Challenges for K-12

Regent Vice Chairman Fred DuVal said the report needs a deeper examination to understand what is driving “leaks” in the student pipeline. For one thing, not enough students are considering college, he said.

Education experts agree that educators and parents need to stress more the importance of getting a degree so students will aspire to complete one.

Mesa resident Valerie Keim was able to finish two bachelor’s degrees in five years at Arizona State University by taking some courses for college credit while still in high school. A 2005 graduate of Dobson High School, she always knew she would be going to college.

“It wasn’t a question,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated in May.

Along with encouraging students, schools also must do a better job of preparing students for college, officials say.

Many students who graduate from Arizona high schools aren’t academically eligible to attend one of the three state universities. A 2006 regents study sampled 3,252 student academic records from 66 high schools and found that 52 percent of graduates lacked the grades or required courses to be admitted.

Math was one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Only about 40 percent met the four years of math required for university entry. Foreign language was another barrier, with only 42 percent meeting the two-unit requirement.

African-Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics had much lower eligibility rates than Whites. Students from rural areas had lower rates than those in Maricopa and Pima counties.

Experts are hopeful the percentages of eligible students will grow because of the state Board of Education’s approval of new graduation requirements a few years ago. Beginning with the freshman Class of 2009, students need four years of math to graduate from high school. They once needed only basic algebra and geometry to get a diploma. They also need a third year of science, up from two.

Colleges’ challenges

For those who attend college in Arizona, completion too often eludes them, said Tom Sugar, senior vice president for Complete College America, a non-profit group based in Washington, D.C., that works to boost graduation rates nationally.

The biggest problem, he said, is that colleges still cater to the traditional full-time student who lives on campus.

The schools give short shrift to growing numbers of students who attend part time and have families and jobs. Colleges need to offer more flexible class schedules, and it’s not enough to just add more online courses because not every student has high-speed Internet and a great computer, he said. “It’s opening your eyes and seeing the true nature of the modern American college student,” he said.

At the University of Arizona, there are various reasons students don’t graduate, said Richard Kroc, associate vice provost for institutional research.

Some have trouble with math and aren’t able to maintain the 2.0 grade-point average necessary to stay enrolled. Others leave for personal reasons. Kroc said the university is working on approaches to increase graduation rates, including programs that help students become more engaged in university life.

At ASU, officials have made several changes. They offer more tutoring and, in 2007, launched a Web-based program, e-adviser, that maps out the courses needed each semester for students to graduate. It also notifies an adviser if students get off-track.

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Nevada Proposes Major Overhaul Of College Policies And Performance

College Completion
Nevada Seeks To Graduate More College Students through National Program
When it comes to the portion of young adults with college degrees, Nevada ranks below every other state. The state also ranks low in high school freshmen who go on to get a college degree and the adult population with a bachelor’s degree or higher. These data prompted the state to join up withComplete College America, a national effort to increase the number of college graduates. ( Source: ECS)