Oct 14

Written by: Greater Louisville Project
10/14/2009 9:32 AM

If you’ve been reading the news about American education lately, you may wonder how we can start repairing our once enviable postsecondary system.  According to a recent article in the New York Times, the United States now graduates fewer of its college students than most other advanced economies.  This fact has caused us to think about the responsibility of colleges and universities.  Shouldn’t higher graduation rates be their top priority?

A forthcoming book, “Crossing the Finish Line,” explores this question and finds that it’s not.  And it makes sense, since we often hear more about the average SAT scores of a college’s freshman class than its graduation rate.  A good first step is to push graduation rates to the top of the page when students and their parents are evaluating colleges.  Thankfully, this is something the Department of Education has just started doing when students apply for federal financial aid.  Many lifelong Louisville residents have told us they weren’t aware of the University of Louisville’s graduation rate until The Greater Louisville Project started publishing it in its annual report.  By the way, even though less than half of the University’s entering class graduates in six years, the rate is trending upward (in 2008 the six-year graduation rate was 46% up from about 35% in 2003).  

So even though the news is not terribly uplifting, it’s encouraging to see the data coming out into the open so we can discuss and evaluate the priorities of some of our nation’s most important institutions. 
 

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