As a comment to the previous post concerning student graduation rates, I looked up those for UC Irvine. Since I couldn’t copy the whole multiyear table, I will just report on the latest in the table.
For entering freshmen in 2007-8, 67.6% graduated in four years. For the entering class of 2006-7, 83.2% graduated by five years. For more years, the cumulative graduation rate stays between 83 and 84 percent.
I think the figures are actually good. Many things can happen over the four years of a young student’s life and academic career. Many students enter into difficult areas without knowing much about them or whether they are to their tastes or talents. In an area such as pre-med, when it becomes evident that you have to be a top student in a very competitive field to enter medical school or graduate school, there will be changes of major. These often require a fifth year to complete. There are also students who change schools for various reasons. Buried in the data are also students that graduate with dual majors that may take longer. And there are some academic drop outs. It doesn’t help that student tuitions have been rising dramatically in the last few years at the University of California and other universities.
In the previous post on the UCI Forum talk by Prof. Matthew, he quoted national rates of 38% graduating in four years, and 57% by six years.
By the way, learning is valuable at all levels, even if one does not complete an undergraduate degree, or stops at a Masters degree in graduate school. Even people without full degrees can get jobs that utilize the learning that they have attained.
I myself majored in Chemistry, and then in Mathematics in which I graduated. Yet I wanted to go to graduate school in Physics, and would have had to spend another year to complete Physics labs, so I graduated in Math, and was fortunate to enter graduate school in Physics. My wife went to four different Universities for the four years of her undergraduate education.
