OU posts high graduation rate

While many other universities across the country struggle to graduate even 50 percent of their students, Ohio University is bumping the trend and graduating 70 percent of its students within six years, according to a study by the university's Office of Institutional Research.

Some schools, like the University of Massachusetts, Boston, only graduate 33 percent of freshmen who enter, according to an article in the New York Times last Tuesday.

"(OU's graduation rate) proves that we can be a big public university and still take care of our students," said David Descutner, dean of University College and associate provost for undergraduate studies. "A 70-percent six-year graduation rate is very respectable for a public university."

A new college ranking system developed by Washington Monthly puts OU 24th in the country among national universities in terms of Social Mobility - a factor based largely on OU's high graduation rate. The study looks at Pell Grant recipients and SAT scores to develop a predicted graduation rate - OU's is 56 percent - and then compares the predicted rate to the actual graduation rate.

Descutner attributes OU's high graduation rate to OU's "enhanced first year experience," with an emphasis on intensive peer mentorship programs such as Learning Communities and the LINKS program for multicultural students.

"Peers are very influential to particularly first-year students in forming the right kinds of habits," Descutner added.

Learning Communities are groups of first-year students that take a common set of courses. Participation in these communities has risen dramatically since their inception in 1999 when only 40 students participated. This fall, 2,450 students are in a Learning Community, Descutner said.

Learning Communities increase first-year retention by engaging students early, Descutner said.

He also named OU's parietal rule - which mandates all non-commuting OU students live in the residence halls for their first two years - as a major factor in helping students form communities and connections on campus.

OU's LINKS program for multicultural students also aids in retaining students and ultimately helping them graduate, said Stacey Brinkley, OU's interim director for the Office for Multicultural Students' Access and Retention.

Like Learning Communities, LINKS is only formally a first-year program, but the connections students make in the program carry on throughout students' time at OU, Descutner said.

"The first year is most important," Brinkley said. "We are producing a retention rate of 80 percent from first to second year for multicultural students."

The six-year graduation rate for African-American students in 2002 (the most recent data available) was 54 percent. There could be various reasons for this number, Brinkley said, but retention and graduation rates for multicultural students should be a university-wide effort. The university could benefit from forming focus groups to look into retention and graduation of multicultural students, she added.

President Roderick McDavis' Vision Ohio strategic plan has made investments in areas such as Learning Communities that help OU students graduate, Descutner said. Because of Vision Ohio, the university invested in Learning Communities, academic support services, the Allen Student Help Center and residence halls, he added.

"In all of these cases, we've been able to directly affect the student experience here because of Vision Ohio," Descutner said.

Mapped out in Vision Ohio and a key priority for the coming year is the new Student Success Network, which will bring together effective offices and programs across campus in order to help undergraduates succeed, Descutner said.

Across campus, the Scripps College of Communication boasted the highest six-year graduation rate in 2002, the last year the Institutional Research study calculated, with 86 percent of its students graduating. The College of Business followed with 85 percent, then the Honors Tutorial College with 82 percent. The College of Fine Arts had the lowest graduation rate with 63 percent of its students graduating in six years.