Universities and Graduation Rates
David Leonhardt, with whom I incidentally went to Middle School, has an interesting piece in the NY Times today about graduation rates at universities. The article has a number of points to mate, but the lead is Leonhardt’s assertion that:
At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing.
The data to support this contention is taken from a new Princeton University Press book Crossing the Finish Line, which demonstrates that large numbers of students are failing to graduate from college. This, Leonhardt asserts, is evidence of the failures of the modern university system. Moreover, since freshmen - who tend to populate larger lecture courses - are cheaper to education than upperclassmen, it may even represent a kind of pernicious cost control scheme.
It seems to me that less than perfect graduation rates, however, can be interpreted in a two ways. The first, as Leonhardt has suggested, is as a failure of educational institutes to provide their students with the resources necessary to graduate. An alternative interpretation, however, is that the numbers demonstrate that universities are casting a wide net for potential college graduates, and then letting students determine on their own once they get there whether they will sink or swim. From a Rawlsian viewpoint, this offers a number of nice attributes for society: we are able to identify our college graduates later in the process than if we restricted admission only to those we knew were guaranteed to be able to graduate from college. Yes, some students will fail, but others will get a chance they might not have had with more restrictive admissions policy. Moreover, one can argue that for a college degree to have any meaning, at least some students will have to fail to achieve it; otherwise, the diploma simply equates admission, and not any accomplishment while at the university.
So what do the data have to say about this? Leonhardt presents the following interesting table:
Two things seem to be apparent here. The better the school, the more likely the student is to graduate, regardless of the student’s skills (as measured by HS GPA and SATs). This could be evidence of Leonhardt’s point that more resources (which one would assume the “better” schools are providing to the students) leads to more graduation. It might, however, mean that the most selective schools do a better job of identifying highly motivated students, even controlling for GPA and SAT scores.
However, the second thing apparent from the table is that no matter what the combination of student ability and school selectivity, we always see some students who do not graduate, but we also see lots of students who do. Only one cell on the table (lowest GPAs/SATs at least selective schools) have <50% of their students graduating in 6 years. These numbers seem consistent with a system that takes a chance on a larger number of students than will ultimately graduate, and provides a degree that has some inherent meaning for what went on once a student arrived in college and not only the potential the student showed before they got to college. It may very well be that schools are failing their students, as Leonhardt suggests, but I’m not sure that these data necessarily demonstrate that this is the case.
Comments
Do we know that they didn’t graduate, or only that they didn’t graduate from that institution?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | September 9, 2009 05:14 PM
That’s an interesting point. My understanding is the data just represent graduation rates from the original university within 6 years. If that’s the case, then part of the story here might just be that people are more likely to transfer from lower ranked schools than they are from higher ranked schools, which would make sense. So that might explain some of the variation across the rows of the table, although I doubt it would pick up all of it.
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September 9, 2009 05:20 PM
Also consider that less-selective public institutions also cater to non-traditional students more often. The data are limited to graduation within 6 years… perhaps a professional attending a class or two in night school isn’t able to graduate within 6 years. That isn’t their failure, it’s just their program.
I also see a problem wherein students admitted to more selective colleges feel more pressured to succeed. If I’m a mediocre student, I’m a lot more likely to really put my nose to the grindstone and graduate if I’m accepted to an Ivy League than if I’m at Podunk State. (At least I’d think so.)
Posted by: Justin N | September 9, 2009 08:58 PM
How are foreign students factored in? Also, doesn’t much of the problem result from K-12 education failures? How much time and effort should colleges and universities have to spend of remedial efforts?
Posted by: Shag from Brookline | September 10, 2009 07:04 AM
It seems to me that this data is hardly enough to form a defensible conclusion. There appear to be two trends, one that there is a relationship between GPA/SAT scores and graduation rates, higher score, more likely to graduate in general. Also there is a trend that seems to imply that regardless of GPA/SAT score, there is a trend that selectivity also impacts graduation rates, more selective, more likely to graduate. These are independent variables. GPA/SAT relates to the students and their previous schooling preparation for college while selectivity relates to the institutions and potentially, their resources. A multiplicity of theories behind the data can all be postulated but none can be well supported from this sort of shallow data dive.
And after reading Leonhardt’s article… I guess I need to buy the book to find out… drat, glad my student loans are all paid off!
Posted by: Michael | September 10, 2009 08:29 AM
You’re also forgetting the other confounding factor: obscene Ivy-level coddling of students.
I’m a graduate student at an Ivy university who graduated from a large (reasonably selective) public university that definitely embodied the sink or swim approach.
The amount of elite university resources devoted to ensuring that every last one of their students graduate is a hugely distorting factor endemic to universities with large endowments. It’s virtually impossible to fail anybody around here.
Posted by: Edwin | September 10, 2009 11:37 AM
I teach at a Podunk U. The frustrating thing about stories like this is that my university administrators will seize on it as evidence that the faculty need to dumb down our courses, to make them more “accessible” (i.e., harder to fail), rather than to provide our students with remedial tutoring centers etc so that they can use college to acquire the skills they never got in high school.
As is evident, I get cranky at the implication that these universities are failing to serve these students… my colleagues and I do everything we can to reach out to the students who try. But what do you do when a student doesn’t show up to class save to take the tests, entirely ignores everything on the syllabus, doesn’t buy the book/s, and/or doesn’t return phone calls from the campus program designed to reach out to at-risk students, but still expects a C? Some students don’t seem to want to succeed: I teach a lot of them. What would Leonhardt have me do? (this is in part an honest question: if an answer exists, I’d be eager to hear it!)
Posted by: Aji de Gallina | September 10, 2009 12:12 PM
The SATs are a disguised IQ test, so no wonder those with high scores (i.e, students who attend very selective universities) find it easier to graduate average students at Public State U.
Posted by: abe | September 11, 2009 06:34 AM