Category Archives: Faculty Life

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting series of articles and infographics called “College Completion.”  Given some of the conversation we’ve had here and around EMU in general about graduation rates, this is definitely worth the browsing.

There are some problems with the claims being made here and EMU doesn’t even exist in the CHE’s info graphic, but still, some interesting observations.  I’ll note two for now.  In the article “Students Who Don’t Count,” Sara Lipka reports, claims: “Of the five million students who started college in the fall of 2009, 2.4 million of them didn’t fit the federal definition” of what the U.S. Department of Education counts as a college student in terms of graduation rates.  ”Transfers, part-timers, and students who take a break and re-enroll either later or elsewhere—even if they graduate—don’t count.”  She highlights a number of these “non-traditional” students who fall through the cracks at the end, and a lot of those students look a heck of a lot like EMU students.

Oh, and because Obama was a transfer student, he wouldn’t have counted as a college graduate according to the way feds count graduation rates.

The other thing that I thought was pretty interesting was the opening paragraphs of the article “To Raise Completion Rates, States Dig Deeper for Data.”  Let me quote at length:

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system allows students to apply for enrollment until the Friday before classes began. But then administrators at one college looked at what happened to those students and discovered a pattern: Students who enrolled closer to the start of the semester didn’t do as well as those who had signed up earlier.

As a result of that finding, the college required new students to apply at least 10 days before the start of the semester, and similar efforts are being studied at other institutions in the statewide system.

The change in policy is meant to save the students and the institutions from wasting time and money on courses that are more likely to lead to failure, says Leslie K. Mercer, associate vice chancellor for policy and planning at the statewide system, which collects extensive information on the roughly 280,000 students enrolled in credit-bearing courses.

While a relatively minor decision, that sort of change can make a big difference in helping colleges to ensure student success. And it’s an example of the kinds of policies that are possible only when states and systems track and analyze the academic performance of individual students.

I see this first hand at EMU almost every semester.  In my classes, there is almost always a direct relation between student success and when students enroll:  the earlier the enrollment, the more likely they will do well in class.  And students who register at the last moment and/or after a class begins are the most likely to drop or fail my classes.

To me, this is an example of the kind of minor change EMU could make if the administration was really interested in graduation rates instead of enrollment/tuition money.  I am willing to bet a doughnut that if we had a policy similar to this one in Minnesota, we’d see an uptick in graduation rates.  But we’d also see a downtick in numbers, both in terms of enrollment and money.  After all, those students who register for classes and then fail still pay tuition.

Anyway, interesting stuff.