UA Official Sees A Face Behind Every Statistic

Raising Graduation Rate More Than Science, She Says

Visitors look at names on the Senior Walk in front of Old Main on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville on Monday.
Visitors look at names on the Senior Walk in front of Old Main on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville on Monday.

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s quest to improve its graduation rate is not just a numbers game for administrators like Kathy Van Laningham, who has been tracking the university’s progress for more than a decade.

For years, Van Laningham has been crunching the sixyear graduation-rate data for the Fayetteville campus or overseeing those who do the calculating.

There’s a face behind every statistic, she said.

“Every time I walk across this campus, I see a name that I know on Senior Walk,” she said.

Van Laningham even walks over her own name - Kathy Mandrell - whenever she uses the sidewalk that passes Mullins Library and the Fine Arts Building.

“It’s there for a lifetime,” Van Laningham, now UA’s vice provost for planning, said of the university’s tradition of stamping its graduates’ names in concrete.

“If they’ll just finish, they’ll be part of this institution forever.”

Last week, UA Provost Sharon Gaber told faculty senators that the university’s six-year graduation rate had topped 60 percent for the first time.

Based on first-time, fulltime, degree-seeking freshmen who began their studies in fall 2006, the rate hit 60.4 percent at the end of six years.

The six-year graduation rate is the primary measureof academic success for public four-year universities. It has been a focal point of UA leaders for more than a decade as a means to help Arkansas increase the number of residents with bachelor’s degrees and to attract more industries.

The rate is the main gauge the federal government uses to hold an individual public university accountable for efficiently using taxpayer and tuition dollars to produce graduates in a reasonable amount of time.

Brandi Hinkle, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, said colleges and universities are directed to track the completion in 150 percent of the time, so a traditional fouryear university can count itsstudents’ success within six years’ time while two-year colleges get three years.

G. David Gearhart, who became UA’s chancellor in July 2008, set out 15 goals in a “transparency and accountability” document he posted on the university’s website in 2009.

Gaber told the faculty senate Wednesday that the university planned to focus on five of these goals, one of them being the graduation rate.

The university’s goal is increasing the graduation rate to 66 percent by 2015, and 70 percent by the time of UA’s sesquicentennial in 2021.

In a September update to Gearhart’s transparency document, UA leaders’ report card for the university’s sixyear graduation rate graded it as having only “modest progress” - No. 3 on a scale of 1 to 4, sandwiched between “sufficient progress” and “insufficient progress.”

The fall 2006 freshmen’s 60.4 percent success rate was an improvement over the 1998 class’s 52.9 percent rate, but the intervening years had seen the rate go up and down, rather than the consistent upward trajectory administrators would like to see.

Still, by 2010, the Fayetteville campus tracked close to the national average for all four-year universities. Students who studied at UA in the six years between 2004 and 2010 graduated at a 57.9 percent rate, compared with 58 percent nationally, astracked by the National Center for Education Statistics. It finds that completion rates tend to be highest for private nonprofit universities, followed by public universities and then private for-profits.

Within Arkansas, UA has led other four-year schools for as long as anyone can remember and has stayed well ahead of the average.

Using a slightly different calculation, the state Department of Higher Education this past spring found public four-year universities averaged a 39.5 percent six-year graduation rate for the 2005-2011 freshman cohort, compared with UA at No. 1 with 58.1 percent. The Fayetteville campus’s calculation for its report to federal higher-education officials was similar, at 59 percent.

The state’s six-year graduation rate is calculated using a shorter timeframe, amongother differences, Hinkle and Van Laningham said. The department ends its count before summer school or intersession courses have concluded, Hinkle said.

“They count through May, and we count through August,” Van Laningham said.

For instance, the state shows UA with a 60 percent graduation rate for the 2006 freshman class, compared with the university’s 60.4 rate.

Another difference, Van Laningham said, is that the federal definition of the sixyear graduation rate calls for four-year universities to remove certain students, such as deceased students or those students called into military service, so they don’t register as “drop-outs.” But those numbers, which typically are small, are not reported to the state.

The update to Gearhart’sgoals document identifies a number of ways UA will try to improve its students’ completion rate, such as encouraging and helping them earn their undergraduate degrees closer to the traditional fouryear timetable.

University officials have said students offer several reasons for taking longer than four years to graduate including the need to work to pay for school, study abroadand limited class sections for prerequisites they need to graduate.

UA also has increased the minimum outstanding balance due that causes a “hold” to be placed on their registration from $10 to $50, has established an “Improving Graduation Rates Task Force,” has hired a graduation analyst and has identified factors that can increase graduation rates such as undergraduateresearch opportunities.

“We’ve raised the admission standards, we’ve worked hard, we’ve done things to help students make a better transition from high school to college - but it’s not where we need it to be,” Van Laningham said.

“To hit 60 [percent], I was really excited to see it,” Van Laningham said. “ And I hope that gets into kids’ heads: to finish.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/20/2012

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