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In a quest to prove someone wrong on another forum, I came across a great article. For a long time, I have argued that the low community college graduation rates should not be compared to those of for-profit, 4-year colleges. The main reason for this is that many people intentionally transfer to 4-year colleges before graduating with their associates degrees. I'm currently a PhD student, but I am considered a dropout at two community colleges.
Quote:Data on graduation rates, as gathered by the National Center for Education Statistics for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, count only first-time, full-time students who finish a degree at the institution at which they began in one and a half times the duration it would normally take to complete the degree (that is, three years for a two-year associate degree, and six years for a four-year bachelor's). So a student who transfers from a community college to a four-year institution and completes a bachelor's degree counts as a failure, in graduation-rate terms, for both the community college and the four-year institution. Until the government changes its data gathering to account in a positive way for such transfer students, thousands of students who complete their college degrees will continue unrecorded in government reporting.
Reverse-Transfer Programs Reward Students and Colleges Alike - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Wow. That's astounding. By that measure, I'm currently a failure at probably 8-9 institutions. I've cobbled together classes from four different CC's, and five colleges/universities, only graduating at TESC. I have two degrees from it, have a great job in part due to them, and continue this reckless pattern of failure by pursuing undergraduate credits in engineering for the sake of furthering my career/self-improvement with little prospect of completing an engineering degree.
Failure feels great!
I'm an engineer. Go figure.
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I'm wondering if they only count degree-seeking students; otherwise, a lot of people taking courses for fun or professional development would be counted as dropouts. I was a degree-seeking student at the two community colleges I attended. I chose to be a degree-seeking student at the second community college even though I had no plan to graduate from there. It had to be done for financial aid purposes.
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This is a widely recognized issue with community colleges. Unfortunately there's little resolution, as the merits of this metric are still being debated by some opposing definitions and beliefs.
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As education becomes more mobile, the graduation rates become useless. We should be encourages colleges to be more flexible, but ratings like these encourage territorial attitudes.
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UptonSinclair Wrote:As education becomes more mobile, the graduation rates become useless. We should be encourages colleges to be more flexible, but ratings like these encourage territorial attitudes.
While certainly there's an upward tick in mobile education, it remains a distant outlier of higher education. Our education system is still based on the traditional student archetype. Which under that model, there's still merit to this metric.
Unfortunately, community colleges are not necessarily geared towards solely traditional students. Thereby skewing this metric.
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Even though I already had a master's degree, I applied for an A.S. just to help my community college's graduation rate. Afterwards, one school official encouraged me to apply for an A.A. as well because I had enough hours. I'm going to eventually do that.
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clep3705 Wrote:Even though I already had a master's degree, I applied for an A.S. just to help my community college's graduation rate. Afterwards, one school official encouraged me to apply for an A.A. as well because I had enough hours. I'm going to eventually do that.
Sounds like some of the manipulation the national university were doing to move up the U.S. News Ranking. Also U.S. News measures freshman retention as a sign of quality. This would mean that students who are going to a school and transfers reflects negatively on the school, maybe why my 4 year I applied to was so apprehensive, being that I'm in the military. But that's just conjecture.
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03-21-2014, 07:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-21-2014, 07:43 AM by sanantone.)
Many people don't care about earning an associates; their end goal is the bachelors. One cannot earn a bachelors at 99.9% of the community/junior colleges. I didn't leave San Antonio College because of quality issues; all I wanted were some transfer credits for TESC. I also didn't want to deal with meeting their gen ed requirements for the AA. I picked up an AAS from TESC just because I already had the credits; I knew it wouldn't do much career-wise.
For those who have the end goal of earning a bachelors, they attend community colleges with the intention to transfer. So, you can't use this as a measure of quality at schools that don't even offer what students want. Community colleges don't care about rankings. They just don't want to be penalized through funding for something that is erroneously perceived as negative in all cases. There are people who drop out of CCs and never return to school, but there are many who just attend for the transfer credits.
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sanantone Wrote:Many people don't care about earning an associates; their end goal is the bachelors. One cannot earn a bachelors at 99.9% of the community/junior colleges. I didn't leave San Antonio College because of quality issues; all I wanted were some transfer credits for TESC. I also didn't want to deal with meeting their gen ed requirements for the AA. I picked up an AAS from TESC just because I already had the credits; I knew it wouldn't do much career-wise.
For those who have the end goal of earning a bachelors, they attend community colleges with the intention to transfer. So, you can't use this as a measure of quality at schools that don't even offer what students want. Community colleges don't care about rankings. They just don't want to be penalized through funding for something that is erroneously perceived as negative in all cases. There are people who drop out of CCs and never return to school, but there are many who just attend for the transfer credits.
In many cases with community colleges, I'd argue that neither associates or bachelors degrees are the end goal. Unfortunately without a degree, diploma, or certificate being earned; a negative reflection occurs. I believe if a student transfers full time to an instate university with an articulation agreement in place, the student is considered a success.
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