OT: UM graduation rates
I found this article today outlining the top 25 schools in four-year graduation rates. Somewhat unsurprisingly, U of M makes the top 10 public universities. Strangely absent are Michigan State or Ohio State.
Some highlights:
- UM is ranked 8th, with 70% of incoming students graduating in four years
- The national average four year graduation rate is a lowly 27%
- Only 57% of students graduate in SIX years
Just thought I would share with you all yet another reason why U of M is a great place, and I hope this brightens your Sunday Morning (afternoon).
February 13th, 2011 at 12:05 PM ^
Out of the Big Ten schools besides Michigan at #8, only PSU makes the cut at #22 with a 60% four-year rate. Unsurprisingly, the service academies dominate the chart with #1, #4, #5, and #6. I can't wait to see the 25 worst schools for four-year graduation.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:10 PM ^
At 17 with 64%, but yes, it is kind of shocking considering how prestigous the B1G is academically. I suppose the service acadamies could have pushed a couple B1G schools out of the top 25 if they were on the fringe
February 13th, 2011 at 1:11 PM ^
I counter, though, that no conference is represented significantly. Having 3 schools in the top-25 when the Pac-10 and ACC have 2 schools combined is pretty impressive.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:58 PM ^
2. Virginia
7. UNC
15. UCLA
16. Cal
20. Maryland
I agree 3 is still a good number for a conference, but those two are nowhere near only 2 combined.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:51 PM ^
The bottom five will primarily be commuter schools.
February 13th, 2011 at 2:05 PM ^
Didn't see that someone else had seen Illinois at 17.
Well addressing the topic, the reason public universities are going to have much lower rates is because there are a lot of public unis that are of lower quality and have to take students of lesser quality.
February 13th, 2011 at 4:39 PM ^
here.
- Great Basin College, NV 0%
- Institute of Amer. Indian & Alaska Native Culture, NM 0%
- Oklahoma State University Inst. of Technology, Okmulgee 0%
- San Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 0%
- Texas A&M University, Commerce 0%
- Texas A&M International University, Laredo 0%
- Alabama State University, Montgomery 0%
- Macon State College, Macon, GA 0%
- Dalton State College, Dover, DE 0%
- Delaware State College, Dover 0%
- Harris-Stowe State University, St. Louis 0%
- Southern University at New Orleans 0%
- Louisiana State University, Shreveport 0%
- Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, KS 1%
- Oglala Lakota College, Kyle, SD 2%
- University of Houston-Downtown, TX 2%
- Purdue University-North Central Campus, Westville, IN 3%
- Nevada State College, Henderson 3%
- Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago 3%
- University of the District of Columbia 3%
- Chicago State University, IL 3%
- University of Texas at Brownsville 3%
- West Virginia University, Parkersburg 3%
- University of Texas at El Paso 4%
- Sul Ross State University, Alpine, TX 4%
February 14th, 2011 at 8:42 AM ^
A lot of those look like non-residential schools to me. They probably appeal largely or entirely on part-time students, many of whom are holding down jobs or have families. If you can't take 4-5 courses per semester, then of course you won't graduate in four years. You probably don't pay any more money per course, either, so it's not the horrible burn of money that you'd experience with six years at a residential school.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:06 PM ^
Damn, it took me 4.5 years. I take full responsibility for us not being top 5. Sorry, all.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:46 PM ^
It is with deep regret that I announce that I also took 4.5 years to graduate, but only because I was finishing out another major. I know, I should have loaded up on classes a little more my junior and senior years, but then I would have had protracted bouts of sobriety.
February 14th, 2011 at 12:13 AM ^
Same here. I was lazy and took a full 5 years. I accept my shame at the expensive of a second major and a 3.8 GPA.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:08 PM ^
I paid out-of-state tuition for four years and graduated recently. The expense (my parents) made me gradutate on time. If I could, I'd still be there, and graduation rates be damned.
Leaving Ann Arbor after four years= worst mistake EVER!!
February 13th, 2011 at 5:06 PM ^
Are you sure you just gradutated, and didn't full-on gradumatate?
February 13th, 2011 at 9:07 PM ^
Touche, beat me to the punch on my theory-er.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:12 PM ^
...lure top recruits to Michigan! :P
February 13th, 2011 at 12:20 PM ^
I doubt that most recruits would care about four-year graduating rates because of the practice of redshirting. Unless they're good enough to enter the NFL draft after their RS/true junior years, most players will ideally spend 5 years in whatever program they play for. Taking an extra year also helps them take lighter courseloads in whatever season their sport is played.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:57 PM ^
FYI, if you didn't know, Michigan offers more than just a football team. There's actually like a school somewhere in Ann Arbor too and I guess it's kinda good.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:13 PM ^
Not to belittle Michigan's success here, but I don't think it's fair to simply compare school to school. I have friends who are in the Ohio State engineering program, and because they very much encourage a co-op semester as well as other things built into the program structure, it is almost impossible to graduate in 4 years. It is essentially considered a 5 year progam. I'm sure the same is true with other disciplines, but I think variances in how the programs are structured could drastically alter these numbers.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:38 PM ^
February 13th, 2011 at 12:52 PM ^
I'm not saying it's just co-oping. Rather the entire program is set up to be five years. That doesn't make it inherently better or worse, but it's the truth. Another example: the engineering- physics program at tulane used to be five years, not sure if it still is. Obviously this doesn't explain the entirety of the disparity by any stretch, but it's not controlled for by the authors and is likely skewing the numbers a bit.
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<br>Also, I highly doubt cocaine use is the primary cause either. Contributing, maybe...but then again Michigan has a surprising amount of hard drug use so it may be less of a difference then you think.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:00 PM ^
Quick follow up with numbers. OSU has ~40,000 undergrads. The college of engineering enrolls about 5600. Let's say 5000 of those take the traditional 4.5-5 year plan. That alone is 12.5% of the total number of undergrads who won't graduate in 4 years simply because of how the educational path in their program is structured.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:23 PM ^
I counter with this: why would you attend a 5 year program at OSU rather than attending a 4 year program at UM, which has much higher engineering prestige?
Of course money may play an issue for out of state students, but it doesn't change the fact that UM's degree is much more desirable, especially considering it takes 0.5 to 1 year less.
EDIT: I realize that this doesn't really change the fact that the numbers may be skewed, but it does support the overall point that UM is a more desirable destination
February 13th, 2011 at 1:32 PM ^
Well, I'm from Ohio, hence the reason I have many friends who attend OSU. But the question you're asking isn't really relevant. There are so many factors that influence where you want to go to school. To name a few:
Cost of attendance - OSU is $9,420 per year for instate residents, UM is $36,000 per year for out of state residents
Comfort - maybe your whole family went there, you loved the campus, all your friends are going there, etc.
Program Availability - maybe the program isn't offered at UM and is at OSU (hypothetical, not sure if there are any cases of this in regard to engineering).
Acceptance - maybe you didn't get accepted to UM, and while OSU is maybe a step down, it's still decently well regarded (at least in the midwest) and you realize that as long as you work hard, you can be successful with a degree from OSU.
I mean, why did you choose to go to Michigan over programs like Stanford and MIT which are arguably (not conclusivly) better than Michigan for undergraduate engineering?
February 13th, 2011 at 3:26 PM ^
Tons of engineers take extra years at Michigan, too. You're almost guaranteed a fifth year at UM if you're doing certain combinations of majors/minors or in certain programs. Of course, a fifth year is also a great opportunity to take grad courses or hammer out a senior thesis or something, too.
February 13th, 2011 at 4:48 PM ^
Or just get hammered.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:54 PM ^
Not sure why people are negging you, b/c you are absolutely right (and it's pointless in the broken system). For instance, Vanderbilt encourages you to go for 5 years and I'd like anyone here try to explain to me that Vanderbilt isn't a good academic school.
February 13th, 2011 at 2:15 PM ^
Really? I have two friends that went to Vandy and both graduated on time. I could see them advocating it for financial reasons.
February 13th, 2011 at 5:17 PM ^
It wouldn't surprise me that schools would encourage people to stay an extra year. Another year of tuition payments benefits the school's bottom line, especially when those fifth-year students are almost never living on campus.
February 13th, 2011 at 5:31 PM ^
This is not true. Most schools do not make money from tuition. If you go to IPEDS data center (the site that the article used) you can see expenses vs revenue. U of M, for example spends $879,920,000 on "instruction," while tuition brings in $719,647,000 of revenue.
Maybe this is an over-simplified example, but I have heard before that UM takes a net loss per student it admits FWIW.
February 13th, 2011 at 6:24 PM ^
I'm not talking about admitting freshmen. I'm talking about having fourth-year students return for a fifth year. As a rule, upperclassmen in general - and seniors in particular - make significantly less use of university resources than underclassmen do. From a financial standpoint, it's in a university's best interests to have as many upperclass students as it can.
As for U-M taking a net loss on the average student admitted, I can fully believe that - because the people in charge of the school's finances are unbelievably, laughably incompetent.
February 13th, 2011 at 9:22 PM ^
The possibility of getting lucky notwithstanding, The outstanding growth of Michigan's endowment has been fiscally responsible (not overspending after highs to cushion itself while earning healthy ROR's) and impressive at the same time:
http://www.michigandaily.com/content/2009-02-04/erik-lundberg-michigan-…
http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/…
February 14th, 2011 at 9:31 AM ^
It is not true that upperclassmen are cheaper to have around than underclassmen. The opposite is true. This is why at U-M (and some other schools) upperclassmen pay more in tuition. They tend to take more advanced classes and labs, in specialized (and smaller) sections.
It's curious to me that you feel you can judge the incompetent of "the people in charge of the school's finances" when you don't understand instructional costs--or, from other comments, know that Housing is an auxiliary unit. Or claim that tuition revenue being less than instructional costs is a sign of institutional incompetence--when we're a public school with appropriations.
February 13th, 2011 at 1:08 PM ^
I agree that different schools encourage different graduation timeframes, but I think the point is that unless your school has a schoolwide standard of 5-year programs, the fact a couple pockets of grads take more years doesn't hide the fact that large swaths of students don't graduate in 4 years.
Also, it does seem like higher-regarded schools (UNC, UM, UCLA, Cal, Illinois, etc.) have graduates who finish in 4 years AND have solid job prospects when they are out.
Also, I'm always a little leery about stats like this because of factors like the ones you enumerated, but I'm sure they normalize a bit for it as well.
February 13th, 2011 at 2:55 PM ^
I agree. This isn't meant to belittle OSU (although belittling them is fun), but any Ohio high school graduate used to be able to enroll at OSU and try to earn a degree. Huge numbers failed out because they couldn't pass the required Freshman curriculum, which was designed to weed them out.
That's just an example of a lot of state schools trying to make education available for those willing to try. There's nothing wrong with that, but it will result in lower graduation rates.
For what it's worth, the strongest undergraduate public school in Ohio, Miami, is just a couple slots below Michigan. Students who attend the best schools are there for a reason and plan to graduate. Second tier schools get a lot of high school grads who are just looking for a place to party for a few months.
February 13th, 2011 at 3:09 PM ^
I think you nailed it. A place like Michigan, Virginia, UNC or the service academies is able to attract top students and those kids are more likely to graduate in four years no matter what school they attend (though perhaps staying more than four years isn't an option for the cadets and this raises their rate). If Harvard and ITT Tech swapped freshmen classes, the graduation rates would probably flip accordingly.
I don't really get what the point of the original article was. Lots of kids try to go to college coming out of high school and find out they don't like it or aren't cut out for the academic environment? It is cheaper to go to school for four years than to go for six? It seems pretty obvious to me that schools that are selective in their admissions process are going to enroll students who are more likely as a group to graduate on time than schools that are easier to get into will be able to attract.
February 13th, 2011 at 5:18 PM ^
The article's main point was that you save money be graduating in four years. Admittedly, the article is flawed because the graduation rate is more of a result of the selectivity of these schools. The student's caliber, goals, etc all affect graduation stats like you said. I just thought it was a cool stat that UM is 43% above the average in this respect. It is more a reflection on the students than anything.
February 13th, 2011 at 6:38 PM ^
Interesting, not sure how long "used to be able..." means, but OSU actually does the opposite (well at least as far as the main campus goes). They've significantly decreased the number of slots available for incoming freshman and increased the slots for transfer students from their satellite campuses in an attempt to make it more selective.
Also, I was fortunate enough to attend a pretty strong private high school, and while many kids were accepted to OSU, there were plenty who were not.
And I'm not sure if I'd say Miami > OSU. It's smaller, and there's probably many things they do well there relative to OSU. I come from a hard sciences background, however, and you won't have the same opportunities or equipment available at Miami as you will at OSU. For instance, Miami doesn't have a medical school, and that really limits what's available for a lot of students who are interested in biomedical sciences. So while Miami is a decent school, I would say OSU is as well (*gasp*).
However, I will say that the average student at Miami might be more intelligent/harder working which may have been what you were getting at anyway.
February 14th, 2011 at 9:07 AM ^
I think that you are talking about the way things were, rather than the way things are now, not only for OSU, but for Michigan and for virtually all state schools. Education has become so expensive that virtually all state schools have changed their enrollment criteria. As the number of qualified students continues to rise relative to the number of slots, the quality of students has also risen. Many state schools, including schools like OSU, PSU, etc. are now very solid academic insitutions. Michigan is no different. Check average SAT scores on a year by year basis and the curve is headed up virtually everywhere. The current recession and what it has done to housing values has exacerbated the trend even more. As equity in homes has dropped, so have parents' ability to finance high priced institutions.
While Michigan engineering is indeed excellent, there aren't too many engineering curriculums that are easy.
There is also considerable pressure to graduate as many students as you can within four years as resources are limitied, not only within the classroom but also housing. While there are many valid reasons to extend the time to graduate, that is not the preference of most universities.
February 14th, 2011 at 9:00 AM ^
When I went to UM COE, it was 128 credits to graduate (as opposd to 120 for LSA and others), as well as encouraging co-op semesters. This works out to an extra credit/semester if you plan on graduating in 4 years. Most people in my department (Aerospace Eng) did graduate in 4 years. For me to do it, I took some summer classes between soph/junior and junior/senior years. The few people who didn't graduate with us, were actually in a BS/MS 5 year program (get your BS and MS in 5 years). This would skew the numbers for M as well, as I believe most departments have some sort of program like that. Everyone who is in a BS/MS program will not count as graduating in 4 yrs.
February 13th, 2011 at 2:13 PM ^
Thank god I didn't go to M. I needed that extra fifth year of partying.
/s
February 13th, 2011 at 5:15 PM ^
The six-year graduation rate is probably the most important. Whether a kid finishes college within four, five or six years is pretty much irrelevant. But if they're not finishing by six years - at which point they'd typically be 24 years old - something's a little amiss.
February 14th, 2011 at 9:20 AM ^
There is some merit to this, I think, because it leaves some room for people in programs that typically take an extra year, and gives a little wiggle room for those who take a semester off for one reason or another.
Another, somewhat similar approach is the "150%" graduation rate which you can find on IPEDS for just about any school. That's how many people graduate within 150% of the time it would take a full-time student to get through, looking program by program. So instead of imposing one timeline standard, you use six years for people in a typical 4-year program; In a program that takes 5 years, it's 7 1/2 years. In that reporting, U-M, OSU and other schools with students in longer programs are not unfairly punished by the numbers.
February 13th, 2011 at 10:03 PM ^
Just barely made that six year cut off.