How did more than 20 schools across the country increase college graduation rates?

University of Utah student Sinndy Rios walks across the George S. Eccles 2002 Legacy Bridge on campus in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

In a six-year span, the University of Utah has increased its graduation rate by 15%

SALT LAKE CITY — With the help of scholarships and mentorship opportunities, Sinndy Rios, a third-year University of Utah student from Guatemala City, said she feels empowered to complete her education at the U. in four years.

While she acknowledges that she’s privileged to receive scholarships that have helped manage her tuition costs, Rios continues to work three part-time jobs to cover additional living and school costs.

As tuition and living costs reach all-time highs, higher education leaders are focusing on closing gaps that prevent students from graduation.

“The pathway to getting your bachelor’s degree is different for everyone. The resources just need to be presented more clearly,” Rios said. “Other than that, there’s so many great programs here at the U. that I definitely would not be where I’m at without them.”

From the University of Massachusetts to the University of Hawaii, university presidents and senior leaders from over 20 schools across the U.S. came together for a two-day College Completion Summit this week at the U. to share best practices on how the schools have managed to increase their school’s completion rates.

Revitalizing college advising culture, providing additional need-based scholarships and prioritizing student success were common threads from university leaders who’ve found success in raising student graduation rates.

The institutions invited to the conference, according to U. President Ruth Watkins, were able to successfully create “significant change” in graduation and degree completion rates in recent years. The U. has increased its graduation rate of 55% in 2011 to 70% in 2018, she said.

“That’s been through hard labor of virtually every individual on this campus. I think it has been a very consistent message that we wanted to help our students succeed,” Watkins said.

Among the institutions at the conference, Watkins said the median six-year graduation rate was 51% in 2008. Now, a recent snapshot study found the median had increased to 70%.

She said in order to increase the rate of completion further to 80%, “we ought to share information with each other about how to implement that.”

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

University of Utah student Sinndy Rios studies at the Marriott Honors Community in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019.

During the conference Monday, Terri Taylor, Lumina Foundation strategy director for postsecondary finance, said “simply acknowledging” gaps in the higher education system doesn’t close them.

“Frankly, a lot of times, it takes a lot of listening and humility to realize that there’s work that should have been done a while ago,” Taylor said.

In a panel titled “Supporting and Engaging the Student,” moderator and University of California, Riverside chancellor Kim Wilcox said focusing on people, culture and programs helped increase the school’s graduation rates at his school by 20 percentage points in the span of seven years.

Wilcox explained that in an effort to get more students to obtain a degree in four years, a student body president at the school suggested giving first-year college students sweatshirts with their graduation years printed on them.

“We have a diverse campus,” he said. “We think about all of our students all the time. We don’t try to level the playing field for some reason. And that philosophy is fundamental to how we think.”

Teri Longacre, vice provost and dean of undergraduate student success at the University of Houston, said she worked on shifting the school’s advising culture from reactive and transactional to proactive and student and completion-focused.

Initially, Longacre said, a program that focused on students taking 15 credit hours a semester was met with resistance, and it was difficult to obtain four-year degree plans from different colleges at the school as administrators were afraid that it would burn out students.

“I was told that this would kill our students, they couldn’t possibly take 15 hours a semester,” she said. “They have and they’re graduating at much higher rates, and so we didn’t kill them.”

During a panel on innovative financial and affordability solutions, Beth Akers, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said going to college today is not like what’s depicted in movies.

She said about 40% of U.S. students work full time, and one of the biggest reasons students drop out of college is due to finances. The high cost of tuition, combined with rent and books, can be a lot for a student to handle, especially if students are unwilling to borrow or unaware of financial aid or scholarships, she noted.

“I imagine that most students who start degrees just have no idea about the intrinsic risk in this investment, driven largely by the fact that there’s a really good chance that they won’t finish their degree,” Akers said.

Jorge Pérez, associate vice president of academic affairs and success at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said everything he and his brother have been able to accomplish has been due to their higher education.

“The American dream has changed considerably since I was in college,” he said.

Pérez said former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam started an initiative called the Drive to 55, which strives to equip 55% of Tennesseans with a college degree or certificate beyond high school by 2025. That was followed up by another initiative named the Tennessee Promise, a scholarship for students to attend two-year institutions, and later the UT Promise scholarship, an access and completion scholarship.

He said the UT Promise scholarship has a service and mentorship component to it.

“Both the service component and the mentoring component have been proven to be very effective in terms of keeping students engaged in their degrees and completing their degrees,” he said.

At the University of Utah, Martha Bradley-Evans, associate vice president of academic affairs and dean of undergraduate studies, said Watkins and former U. President David W. Pershing both “have a strong and articulated commitment to student success.”

Currently, 90% of U. freshmen return for their sophomore year.

Bradley-Evans said an increase in scholarships and high-level support from U. student success advocates and the LEAP learning community have been significant factors in boosting the school’s retention and graduation rates.

Out of more than 32,000 total students, 13,072 students received scholarships during the fall 2019 semester, she noted.

Student success advocates, she said, don’t have an office space and instead travel through the school meeting students informally to discuss students’ goals, as well as academic and personal challenges, and to connect students to resources. She said the school’s 11 student success advocates are able to reach 6,000 unique students each semester and average a total of 26,000 student interactions each semester.

Additionally, first-year students can enroll in LEAP classes over two semesters with the same teacher, according to Bradley-Evans. The program allows students to build a support network, and each class has its own librarian, academic advisor and student success advocate. Bradley-Evans said the cohort approach has been impactful, particularly to underserved students and women.

She said students from small towns or high schools might feel “overwhelmed” when they step onto the 1,500-acre campus.

“Entering into a first-year learning community makes the large public universities small and knowable and comfortable,” she said. “I think it’s the single best way to get started.”

Rios said programs like the Beacon Scholars, which serves first-generation students, and the First Year Diversity Scholars program, which supports students through monthly one-on-one advising meetings and meetings with an assigned peer mentor, have given her the tools for a successful college experience.

Rios expects to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in political science by 2021.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2omBlf3