By Richard Morgan / Commercial Appeal / Feb. 28, 2011

 

 

When colleges report graduation rates, the industry standard is to presume a six-year timeline. But using the six-year metric, four-year colleges dodge an uncomfortable fact: the dismal rates of four-year graduation.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Memphis, for example, touts a 39.7 percent six-year rate — nearly quadruple its actual four-year rate: 10.3 percent. Similarly, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the six-year rate is double the four-year reality, 59.8 percent compared to 30 percent.

A recent ACT national study noted that graduation rates at four-year public colleges are the lowest in 27 years.

Take Scotty Wilson, for example. At 17, he enrolled in the University of Maryland at College Park as a psychology major. He dropped out after his first semester so that he could drive cross-country six times before coming to Memphis at 22 and enrolling at the U of M at 26. Now, he’s 31 and “on the cusp of being a senior, pretty much,” he said.

For his degree in nonprofit development, he takes 12 credit hours, the minimum required to count as being full-time. He also waits tables 30 hours a week.

“It’s Memphis,” he shrugged. “It’s laid back. People get stuck in a situation here and they stay there. As much as I love this school, we all joke about it. It’s Memphis. They don’t encourage you to take classes to, you know, educate you. Just to process you through the system. My adviser tells me what I have left to take. That’s it. She’s a sweetheart, but there’s no advice. At work, I advise people about the menu more than I get advice from U of M.”

Mickey Blancq, 25, another UofM student, started his college life in 2004 at Mississippi State University, in chemical engineering, before switching to U of M to get a degree in recording music technology and now a second degree, in biology. He has also juggled several jobs.

“You know what gets me?” he said. “We need to bring our photo IDs to exams to prove who were are. They don’t even know what we look like.”

But as easy as it is to blame devil-may-care students or disengaged professors, the administrators themselves sometimes construct a vexing system.

Until recently at the Memphis College of Art, for example, it was nigh impossible to graduate in four years.

A typical bachelor’s degree includes 120 credits. But in 1980 at MCA, the requirement was 150 — that’s at least 19 credits a semester on a four-year plan. Slowly, it normalized: 144 credits in 1981, 132 in 1982, 129 in 1989, and then, in 2001, 120 credits.

“These students have such strict GPA requirements to keep their scholarships,” said Susan Miller, MCA’s vice president of enrollment, “that it’s better to withdraw with a W, which doesn’t affect your GPA, than to fail with an F, which just sinks you.”

It’s a situation that grates on administrators. “This is not high school,” said Ralph Faudree, UofM’s provost. “You need to hit the ground running.”

The problem specific to Memphis, where 23 percent of adults have college degrees, is that so many college students in the city are the first in their family to attend. Those students attain degrees at 67 percent of the rate of students with parents who attended or finished college.

At elite schools, where students tend to have the advantages of coming from wealthier families from better-performing school districts, there is not much disparity between four- and six-year graduation rates. At Rhodes College, for example, the six-year rate of 72.2 percent drops only a few points to 69.7 percent for the four-year rate.

So how does one of America’s poorest cities, full of people who don’t have college degrees, produce a next generation of those who do?

“If I knew that, I’d be higher-up in the food chain,” said Faudree. “We do it one student at a time. It’s not easy. But that’s our mission. That’s our job.”

Six-year graduation rates at “four-year” colleges*:

CBU:

6-year graduation rate: 58.5%

4-year graduation rate: 37.6%

LeMoyne-Owen College:

6-year graduation rate: 25%

4-year graduation rate: 9%

MCA:

6-year graduation rate: 39.7%

4-year graduation rate: 17.6%

U of M:

6-year graduation rate: 37.9%

4-year graduation rate: 10.3%

Ole Miss:

6-year graduation rate: 55.7%

4-year graduation rate: 32.5%

Rhodes:

6-year graduation rate: 72.2%

4-year graduation rate: 69.7%

UT:

6-year graduation rate: 59.8%

4-year graduation rate: 30%

Vanderbilt:

6-year graduation rate: 89.4%

4-year graduation rate: 83.9%

* Rates are from 2008, the most recent year available from the federal database

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Education Trust

Leave a comment