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Graduation Rates Are Not Falling, New Report Says
A new study by a senior research analyst at the Department of Education suggests that the method typically used to calculate student graduation rates makes them an unreliable indicator of the performance of colleges and universities. His findings come as some lawmakers and the Bush administration, concerned about graduation rates, have proposed holding colleges and universities accountable for them in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
The researcher, Clifford Adelman, studied the college transcripts of students who graduated in 1972, 1982, and 1992, and published the results in Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in Postsecondary Education, 1972-2000. Adelman reports that a growing number of students do not graduate from the institution at which they began their college career. He says those students are counted as dropouts at their original institution even if they complete their degrees elsewhere. And because many colleges and universities do not include transfer students in their reported graduation rates, the students who switch institutions often do not factor into the graduation rates of their eventual alma maters. Adelman reports that his comparative data show that the rate of bachelor's-degree attainment among traditional-age college students has remained stable over the past twenty-five years.
While Adelman's findings would seem to allay lawmakers' concerns about graduation rates, not all higher education researchers welcome his report. "I wouldn't want policy makers to pick up this report and say, 'Gee, maybe things aren't as bad as we thought,'" education professor Donald Heller of Pennsylvania State University told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "We still have a problem, and that problem is the large gap in graduation rates between rich and poor students." Heller further explores this gap in his article, "The Changing Nature of Financial Aid," on pages 36-38.
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