According to a recent analysis of 1,400 colleges and universities by the Chronicle of Higher Education, one-third of four-year institutions experienced lower graduation rates over the six-year period ending in 2008.
Late last week a thought-provoking post appeared in Daniel Luzer’s Washington Monthly column “College Guide” that may provide an interesting perspective about this problem–one that should be of particular interest to directors of adult and continuing ed programs.
Luzer opened the column by saying “The Obama administration has made one of its education goals to get more than 11 million more people through college so that the United States can ‘again lead the world with the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.’”
Luzer is making the case for why the so called “non-traditional learner” is so important to the future well being of colleges and universities. Many non-traditionals sign up for regular daytime, on campus programs, but a huge chunk of them also fill the Adult and Continuing Ed programs, whether as part of a professional continuing education requirement or in night-time, weekend, blended, and online programs managed by continuing ed divisions.
Luzer references a guest column by Alan Tripp in Daniel de Vise’s Washington Post column “College, Inc.” Tripp is CEO of Inside Track a San Francisco firm that offers personalized academic coaching to boost college retention.
Luzer quotes Trip that “Roughly 40 percent of America’s college students are non-traditional students. They are workers who’ve gone back to school, former members of the military embarking on new careers and single parents wanting to do better for their families. They could also be one of the most important game-changers in the ongoing national discussion on college completion and the continuing dialogue at College Inc. about how to fix higher education.”
Because the non-traditionals make up so much of the student populations these days, if they have trouble completing college, then every institution serving non-traditional students may well see a decline in graduation rate.
Trip is a “retention” expert and his firm conducts ongoing research into the factors responsible for whether students stay in school or not. In one of their recent projects, based on data for 45,000 students from 17 colleges and universities, here’s what they found as the top five reasons reported by non-traditionals for why they don’t graduate:
- Work/Life Balance (30 percent)
- Finances (26 percent)
- Completion Challenges (13 percent)
- Lack of commitment to graduation (9 percent)
- Health issues (8.6 percent)
Reasons "Non-Traditional" Students Give for Not Graduating. Alan Tripp. Inside Track. March, 2011.
Providing students with the kinds of support that increase retention will naturally lead to increased graduation rates. So Trip is really talking about giving these non-traditionals financial aid, coaching, and access to problem-solving resources to overcome these major reasons why they end up not graduating.
At FutureU, Gail and I have worked with many higher ed institutions, focusing on student preparedness for learning in the blended or online classroom. Ironically, student grades and completion rates go up even for face-to-face learning when they are given formal preparation for learning online.
So Tripp is probably right. Giving them the coaching, tutoring, mentoring and other support they need is likely, to lead to better retention rates and therefore better graduation rates.
You can read Alan Trip’s full article at
You can also read Luzer’s blog post at Nontraditional College Students: America’s Most Important Group by Daniel Luzer | Washington Monthly. (But I pretty much included most of it above.)
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