A New Way of Looking at Completing College

An article, New National Tally of College Completion Tries to Count All Students, by Katherine Mangan in The Chronicle gives many community colleges some hope that the statistics on college-completion rates may come closer to the realities of our many students who can only attend one or two classes per semester. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released a report that looks at the non-traditional path many of our students take toward a college degree.

The report, "Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates," concludes that when such nontraditional but increasingly common patterns of enrollment are considered, the national completion rate jumps to 54 percent, from 42 percent. Among full-time students, 75 percent earn a degree or certificate within six years.

While those numbers are lower than most educators would like, they aren't as alarming as the figures that state and federal policy makers have decried in calling for policies that tie budget allocations to colleges' graduation rates.

Many students who are balancing classes with family and work obligations attend more than one institution and take longer to earn a certificate or degree, the report points out. "Conventional measures of success, such as graduation rates for institution-based, first-time full-time degree-seeking cohorts, are insufficient for recognizing the distinctive pathways these students take, or for understanding the particular risks and supports that shape their academic careers," it says.

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