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College Grad Rates Don’t Always Benefit All Students

120215_graduationAn institution of higher education can improve its graduation rate over time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the college or university has narrowed its graduation gap between White students and students of color.

That’s one of the major takeaways from a new analysis being released today by The Education Trust and titled “Rising Tide: Do College Grad Rate Gains Benefit All Students?”

Another takeaway from the report: Institutional leaders should make a conscious effort to support students of color to ensure they graduate.

“Leading institutions have shown how leaders can change the culture of their campus to focus on student success,” said co-author Andrew H. Nichols, director of higher education research and data analytics at The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that focuses on boosting academic success for minority students.

“They consistently analyze their data, they find troubling trends, they engage faculty to find solutions, and they listen to students and make them part of the problem-solving process,” Nichols said.

The report examines a decade’s worth of data and found that graduation rates among students at four-year public and private nonprofit colleges increased from 56 to 59.4 percent between 2003 and 2013.

But upon taking a closer look, the authors found that those graduation rates didn’t improve uniformly — some of the 489 public and 820 private nonprofits made “huge gains” in their graduation rates, while others remained stagnant or worsened.

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