Completion rates at colleges and universities — Don’t believe what you hear or read!

I spend a lot of time with colleagues from traditional, face-to-face colleges and universities and often hear them dismiss schools that have been reported to have very low completion rates.  It is obvious that these folks, despite working in higher education, do not understand the national problem we have with data on completion rates.  And, if these folks don’t understand the problem, just imagine how confusing it is for people from outside higher education to understand that the way completion rates are calculated is just plain dumb—and misleading. 

The institutions most often cited as having low completion rates are community colleges, for-profit colleges, and colleges that serve adult students.  The reported completion rates can be incredibly low, even zero, and invariably, when reported, set off a flurry of self-righteous condemnation of these schools.  But the indignation may be misplaced.  I say “may” because the way the data is collected, we really have no idea what the real completion rates are.  That is because federal data (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—IPEDS) on completion rates counts only a very limited and specific set of students.  It only counts those students who start college for the first time and remain enrolled at the same institution on a full-time basis throughout their college career.  The way this is described is “first-time, full-time.”

If you have read this blog before and understand my main premise, then you will realize immediately that only a few students in today’s world actually go to college and remain as full-time students through to completion at the same institution.  That is just not the way students act anymore.  Add to this that the calculation of completion rates also assumes that the student will finish within six years of when they start.  That is something else I have written about—when many students are attending part-time, six years may not be an appropriate timeframe.

The idea of “first-time, full-time” is only relevant to the minority of students who go to college full-time after high school.  It is only relevant to that romanticized view of what college is like and that view is not at all accurate in today’s world where students are older, mixing work with study and enrolled part-time.  The latter type of student attends community colleges, for-profit online schools and schools that serve adults.  Take Capella as an example.  Virtually every one of our students is older.  They have very likely attended other schools before coming to us.  And, they are studying part time.  The fact is that if you have almost no students who meet the “first-time, full-time” criterion (Capella had a whopping 3 students who fit this criteria in 2008), you will have almost no completions.

In addition, the Department of Education has identified several variables that predict low completion rates.  Those include being older (delayed enrollment), studying part-time, working full-time, having children or being financially independent of parents.  Four of more of these factors predict completion rates of only 10 percent.  Those variables literally define the students who attend the schools that have relatively low completion rates.  So, the “first-time, full-time” definition and the audience served both work against colleges serving these audiences.

Fortunately, influential public-policy organizations recognize the problem with use of “first-time, full-time” and are calling for changes.  For example, the National Governor’s Association has published an “issue brief” that cites this problem and others and calls for states to take steps to measure more effectively.  The report cites the fact that federal data excludes too many students, and that about half the students in public colleges and universities are not counted.  The report specifically states that “many long-held stereotypes about college students—that they live on campus, enroll full-time, and graduate in four years—fail to describe the U.S. college student population.”  The report goes on to say “meaningful data on postsecondary students should track part-time students, full-time students, first-time students, transfer students, and students pursuing education for non-credential purposes.”  I agree with that statement and the implied fact that the federal data is not meaningful.

So, the next time someone gets bent out of shape over supposed low completion rates based on federal data, remember that the data are biased to an outdated, romanticized view of college and fail to count many, many students—the very students who attend the types of schools that receive the criticism.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike