Low Graduation Rates, Cont.

by Frederick M. Hess  •  Jun 4, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Cross-posted from The Enterprise Blog

http://www.frederickhess.org/2009/06/low-graduation-rates-cont

As always, Charles raises important questions. First off, my coauthors and I fully agree—as we note repeatedly in the report—that high graduation rates cannot simply be presumed, prima facie, to be a good thing. An easy way to boost completion rates is to drop standards, and no discussion of college enrollment or completion should proceed without attention to such concerns. Second, graduation is obviously a joint responsibility of students and higher education institutions—we take pains not to suggest that institutions should be expected to graduate students who are unequipped or unwilling to do the requisite work.

These concerns framed our approach—in which we focused on an "apples-to-apples" comparison among colleges and universities that accept similar students (in terms of high school grades and SAT/ACT scores) and which are similarly selective. But Charles thoughtfully points out that even institutions which accept students of similar accomplishments and which accept a similar percentage of applicants are inevitably going to have student populations that may vary in important ways. Unfortunately, the current data cannot let us convincingly address Charles's intriguing hypothesis. It's not possible to match our data presented in "Diplomas & Dropouts" with the granular data that would allow us to see how much of the variation in institutional completion rates can be explained by more subtle variations in student preparation.

However, as states begin to construct and adopt "K–16 unit record systems" (translated into English: data systems that track data on student performance through K–12 schooling and on into college), it will increasingly be possible to pursue Charles's line of inquiry for colleges and universities in select states. In the meantime, my own sense is that some of the variation will be explained by differences in student composition in the manner Charles suggests; some will be due to disparities in standards, and a substantial amount will be due to the emphasis that institutions put on actually teaching, nurturing, and supporting the students that they have admitted. But I couldn't agree more that this study is a first step in sketching the descriptive picture and that it would be enormously valuable to know much, much more on this front.

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