Complete College America is a brand new national effort to increase graduation rates in US institutions of higher education. The new effort was reported yesterday in Inside Higher Ed (“The Completion Cacophony”) and the day before in the Chronicle of Higher Education in this article (subscription required).
Seventeen states have joined this effort, which is funded by The Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Ford Foundation (quite the line-up).
I’m not sure whether this new effort will really make a dent in the problem, but I can attest that something is rotten in American academia. Our graduation rates are a national disgrace. Even as we are sending students of to college in greater numbers, fewer than half of those who start a bachelor’s degree ever complete it.
Colorado is not one of the 17 states participating in the new effort. But it certainly should. The table below shows that only four of Colorado’s public institutions of higher learning beat the national average. And several of them have embarrassing graduation rates. If these institutions were companies, they would be closed by now for lack of customers. Who would want to attend a school that promised less than a 25% chance of getting your degree?
Graduation and Retention Rates
Universities and Colleges in Colorado
| Graduation Rate (6 yrs) | Retention Rate (1st to 2nd year) | |
| Western State College | 17% | 61% |
| Metro State of Denver | 24% | 62% |
| Adams State College | 30% | 53% |
| Fort Lewis College | 30% | 59% |
| CSU-Pueblo | 31% | 62% |
| Mesa State College | 33% | 61% |
| Univ of Colorado-Colo Springs | 46% | 69% |
| University of Northern Colorado | 48% | 69% |
| Colorado State Univ-Fort Collins | 63% | 82% |
| University of Colorado-Boulder | 67% | 84% |
| Univ. of Colorad0-Denver | 68% | 85% |
| Colorado School of Mines | 87% | 94% |
| Colorado College | 87% | 94% |
| University of Denver | 74% | 87% |
| Regis University | 56% | 83% |
While there are many complex reasons that explain these low graduation rates, the time has come for taxpayers to express a little more outrage at this state of affairs. Would we permit the Registry of Motor Vehicles to have a 50% success rate in getting our license renewed (never mind how long it might take)? Or how about the Department of Public Works filling only half of our potholes?
