Graduation rates drop systematically as the size of an institution’s low-income student population increases, even at selective four-year colleges and universities, according to a recently released report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. However, the trend doesn’t necessarily hold true for some institutions that serve large numbers of low-income students, like Spelman College and Fisk University, which were praised for their high graduation rates. 

The report, “Placing College Graduation Rates in Context: How 4-Year College Graduation Rates Vary With Selectivity,” also found variations in graduation rates by gender and race across the comparison groups.

“The purpose of this study was to provide a context for comparing graduation rates among ‘similar’ institutions,” the report states. Studies have shown that “high school academic preparation and measures of socioeconomic status such as family income and parent’s education are highly predictive of degree attainment. Therefore, a more in-depth picture of graduation rates may be gained by comparing institutions that are similar with respect to the characteristics of their student bodies, rather than by making comparisons across all institutions.”

Researchers compared the six-year 2004 graduation rates among 1,301 four-year colleges and universities. Institutions were grouped by their selectivity levels (very, moderately, minimally) within Carnegie classifications (doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s). Within each of these groups, the colleges were sub-grouped according to the low-income enrollment size (small, moderate, large) in the graduation rate cohort.

Within these groups, the graduation rates were directly and inversely related to the size of the low-income population. For instance, the 2004 graduation rate for those with small low-income enrollments was 69 percent, while the rates for the moderate and large enrollments were 57 percent and 44 percent, respectively.