In debates about accountability in higher education, few data points are as frequently misused as graduation rates. Graduation rates measure attendance time, not outcomes, predicated upon a narrow cohort of “traditional” students (fewer than 25 percent of today’s undergraduates) who start as full-time, first-time freshmen and graduate within six years at the same institution. Aside from traditional transfer students who are unfairly characterized as “dropouts”(even if they complete degrees on the same timetable elsewhere), this statistical blind spot is also biased against part-time older students, many women and students of color, who are more likely to have the personal and financial challenges that accompany extended time to graduation. Millions of such students do complete their degrees, albeit on a “non-traditional” timetable and following a more circuitous collegiate pathway.
I’m totally committed to the success of Trinity University students, including completion of their degrees in a timely way. But nearly two decades of experience with thousands of amazing women has taught me that time-to-completion is often the least useful indicator of true academic success.
Consider Verna, a composite of many Trinity students. Verna juggles work, family and studies as she moves toward completion of her bachelor’s degree. Having started at another college at age 19, only to stop to raise three children and work full time, she was 37 when she enrolled at Trinity. She’s determined to complete her degree with the class of 2007, before she turns 45. When she walks across the stage next May, Verna will have taken 26 years to earn a bachelor’s degree. No one will be prouder on Commencement Day than Verna, her family and her employer — and the Trinity faculty and advisors who supported her.
Sadly, Verna will never exist in the calculation of graduation rates at Trinity, because she was not a “first-time, full-time” freshman when she started here. She will be, forever, some other institution’s “dropout.”
Unfortunately, graduation rates have become surrogates for institutional quality, factoring significantly in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. While graduation rates are agnostic about learning, they reveal much about the homogeneity of a given group of students. As Robert Zemsky points out in Remaking The American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered, economically wealthier families with higher parental educational rates will seek out institutions with high graduation rates, assuming that those rates mean academic quality. The continuing critical mass of high-achieving, high-income students keeps the graduation rate high.
Adult students, low-income students and part-time students have other needs, such as affordability, accessibility, and support services, and they flock to colleges that serve them well. But these students often take longer than the hallowed “150 percent time-to-completion,” resulting in lower graduation rates, hence, lower rankings for those institutions who serve such students well. Traditional yardsticks have no tick marks for real educational outcomes: improvements in writing and critical reading skills, quantitative competence and the development of academic and professional self-confidence.
