That’s because McKee—a former starting quarterback who now serves as a student football coach at Lane—came to Lane as a part-time student who transferred from a community college, and the federally run Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—known as IPEDS—does not count part-time or transfer students when it comes to calculating a school’s graduation rate.
Instead, it only counts full-time, first-time students, as opposed to students such as McKee, whose path to a degree has been one of twists and turns.
“After my first semester, I took a break from school to help my mother; it was necessary for me to go to work,” McKee states in a biography of his college experience.
“After one year of working, I enrolled at Coahoma (Community College) where I walked on to the football team and earned a scholarship; eventually becoming a starting quarterback,” McKee states. “I graduated from Coahoma and enrolled at Lane College because they offered me an athletic scholarship.”
While colleges and universities have long lamented how they don’t get proper credit for graduating part-time or transfer students such as McKee, a group of higher education associations has launched a new effort to change that reality.
Their campaign is called #CountAllStudents, and its leaders and supporters say it is meant to prod the federal government to provide a more accurate picture of graduation rates at America’s colleges and universities.
