Gradumacation

So... the graduation rate here at USI... not the best I have ever seen. At 15%, our four year graduation rate seems shockingly low. Our six-year graduation rate is better, at 34%, but still nothing to be proud of. In class, we have talked a lot about our goals for the university, and one of the goals that keeps coming up from us honors kids is for the university to earn more prestige and respect. It's awfully hard to earn respect as an academic institution with stats like that.

Which brings us to this week's discussion question: what can we do to improve these statistics? There is, of course the obvious answer: hike the entrance standards to "cut the riff-raff," but that would have a lot of negative effects on university growth rate, state funding, tuition, etc. The thing is, there are a lot of people who come to this university because they can't make it in to other schools, or because college is what they are "supposed to do." These students aren't very likely to graduate, but they do increase our growth rates and keep tuition down.

So maybe it's not the best idea to up the standards for acceptance. So that leaves us with two other options: either do everything we can to help those students succeed, or do everything we can to attract more high quality students to USI. Or both. Either of those would be great for the university. But the tough part is actually executing them.