Last month in his annual State of the Campus address, Chancellor DiStefano reiterated our goal of achieving a six-year graduation rate of 80 percent by 2020. He spelled out clearly in the speech that this goal means we have to significantly increase the number of students we retain, and I want to outline the strategy we are employing to achieve that end.
First, the good news. We can be proud that CU-Boulder has the highest six-year graduation rate among all Colorado public higher education institutions, at 70 percent. The six-year horizon is the measure the federal government uses and it does not take into account transfer students but only those who matriculate as freshmen and graduate as seniors. Second, we are equally pleased that we achieve that graduation number at the lowest cost per degree among four-year institutions in the state 鈥� a measure of the efficiencies and focus that we employ at CU-Boulder.
But our challenge in moving that number to 80 percent is great. A full 16 percent of our first-year students fail to progress to their second year at CU-Boulder, meaning that with the additional runoff in subsequent years, we don鈥檛 have a critical mass of persisting students large enough to meet our goal of 80 percent by 2020.
Why are we losing that number? A review of national research shows that the key reasons for student attrition are the perception of students that the university doesn鈥檛 care about them personally; the expense and effort of earning a degree aren鈥檛 worth it (compared to the rewards of having a job); expressions of poor service and treatment of students by campus offices and scheduling issues that prevent students from getting the courses they need when they need them.
A further look into our own data also shows that unless we significantly change the way we interact with and advise our students to successfully get a degree, we will not graduate 80 percent of the entering 2014 class by 2020. We must bring the entire campus together to focus on changing our processes and interactions to be more successful.
The need to graduate more students in a more timely fashion has never been greater. It is a moral imperative for us, first and foremost, but it has other benefits that follow. When we graduate more students, the quality of our students will go up, the quality of our institution will rise accordingly, our rankings among our peers will improve and our resources will be better utilized. In the long term, it will provide more financial stability for the institution.
For the last year, we have been at work on strategies to significantly alter the trajectory of our student persistence. We have:
- Begun to transform academic advising, expanding advising hours and structures, including instituting more convenient hours for advising services and creating common drop-in hours across colleges.
- Put in place the systems that will help our advisors take a holistic approach to advising while collaborating across campus as a coordinated community for the benefit of our students.
- Designed tools that will alert us when a student is floundering听and in need of additional support. The Office of Information Technology is working with the colleges to design and implement a common advising听platform with an initial rollout already in place in Arts and Sciences and a larger rollout coming in March.听This centralized system will be campus-wide rather than specific to the individual colleges. It will provide a cohesive network of information听and support for students, spanning departments, offices, colleges and eventually campuses.
- Launched the Boulder Faculty Assembly鈥檚 Student-Faculty Mentor program. This year the number of students participating has nearly tripled to 1,700. More than 150 faculty have stepped up as mentors.
- Instituted a pre-testing requirement for placing students in math-dependent classes, so that they have a better chance to succeed in those courses.
- Made a stronger commitment to attract more qualified students through the Esteemed Scholars program, which we expanded this year.
- Worked tirelessly through our Student Affairs division to help students focus more clearly on academic success, confront the challenge of balancing social life with academic life,听as well as听deal with issues of physical and mental health, alcohol and drug use.
- Focused heavily on improving the campus climate for all students to create a more safe, welcoming and supportive environment that supports our diverse community.
This is a goal that we can reach. In doing so, we are inspired by our AAU peers such as the University of Washington, which retains 93 percent of its first-year students into their second year. In the coming weeks, we will engage all of our senior academic leadership directly in this effort. You will soon see information on a new website giving you background information and detailing current projects underway. We will talk with you about how you can help with those projects and will be soliciting your ideas for new ways we can promote student success and intervene to help struggling students.
The goal here is nothing less than changing our campus culture, ensuring that every admitted student can succeed. You have my pledge that as we undertake this effort, we will not lower academic standards, and we will continue to build diversity and create a positive campus climate for all. This is a bottom-line credibility and quality issue for our campus.
For us to succeed with the public鈥檚 confidence in this new century, and to demonstrate the value of a CU-Boulder degree, it is not enough that we have the state鈥檚 highest public graduation rate. We want to be among the elite public universities in the world in serving our students, and ensuring their success now and in the future.听