The News & Observer has an article about a new web site that discloses graduation rates for different universities. The site seems interesting, and I’ll likely do some exploring on it later, but here I want to comment on the idea of the graduation rate being a proxy for the quality of education at a university.
For example, in the article it states, “At UNC-Chapel Hill, 83 percent of students finish in six years. Last fall, Chancellor James Moeser said that wasn’t good enough. He resolved to push the university’s rate to at least 92 percent.”
The article stated that “Many factors affect a student’s college success, including academic preparation, job demands and the availability of financial aid.”
Yes, no disagreements there ? but what about academic rigor? The more rigorous the university is, the more work it requires of students, and the lower the graduation rate is likely to be. I’m not arguing there’s a completely inverse relationship between rigor and graduation, because of those other factors in play. But given the widespread acceptance and expectation of grade inflation, I don’t think it’s unfounded to worry that academic rigor, i.e. the quality of education, at an institution of higher learning may suffer when a top administrator mandates ? or when fear of damage to athletics necessitates ? an arbitrary shift in the graduation rate.
For the “disengaged” students, those who want only vocational education and have no intellectual curiousity, a school’s graduation rate would serve as merely a barometer of one’s likelihood of attaining a degree. They would be most pleased with an arbitrary push to raise graduation rates and not at all concerned with any harm to the institution’s rigor (they would likely welcome it).
