According to a new report, more than two-thirds of four-year, public colleges and universities have increased graduation rates from 2003-2013. The increase was not only overall (5.3 percentage points), but for underrepresented students as well (6.3 percentage points). Among the 255 institutions that improved and serve a sizable population of African American, Latino, and Native students, 77 percent raised graduation rates for their underrepresented minority students.
The findings were announced today in a new Ed Trust report titled “Rising Tide: Do College Grad Rate Gains Benefit All Students?” The Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes high academic achievement, looked at the change in six-year graduation rates over the last 10 years among first-time, full-time students at four-year public institutions.
Among underrepresented students, gains were greatest for Latinos (7.4 percentage points) and Native students (6.4 percentage points). Gains among black students were the lowest (4.4 points), which means that gaps between black and white students actually increased.
Here at home, graduation rates for UW-Madison underrepresented students (defined as African-American, Latino or Native students) reached 68.3 percent from 2003-2013, an increase of 12.2 percentage points, according to the trust. Among all UW-Madison undergraduate students, graduation rates reached 82.2 percent. This was an increase of 6 percentage points.
This report comes on the heels of racial incidents and student protests occurring on college campuses throughout the nation.
“Institutional leaders must be intentional about how they support their students of color and how to best guide them to leave with a degree in hand,” said Andrew H. Nichols, Ph.D., Ed Trust’s director of higher education research and data analytics and a co-author of the report. “Leading institutions have shown how leaders can change the culture of their campus to focus on student success. They consistently analyze their data, they find troubling trends, they engage faculty to find solutions, and they listen to students and make them part of the problem-solving process.”
