some thing real about USA education

Colleges urged to change how they treat students
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Colleges and universities can raise graduation rates by focusing on the academic and social problems of new students and emphasizing academics over research, suggest findings released today by an education advocacy group.
Government statistics on 1,395 of the nation's 2,500 public and private four-year colleges and universities show that graduation rates vary considerably, even among comparable schools. The statistics, released by the Education Trust, a Washington advocacy group for low-income and minority students, are available at a new Web site, www.collegeresults.org.

Education Trust director Kati Haycock says one of the most glaring gaps in graduation rates is between white and black students; cutting that in half would produce an additional 10,000 black college graduates every year. "We can do this if we're willing to stop blaming graduation problems on the students," she says.

The new Web site compares schools by 11 factors, including size, selectivity, SAT scores and the percentage of students who are eligible for Pell grants.

It finds, for instance, that Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., graduates 58.3% of students within six years, 15.9% more than comparable public colleges.

High-performing colleges focus on several key factors, says Kevin Carey, Education Trust director of policy research:

• Offering first- and second-year students counseling and help with social and academic problems.

• Emphasizing that professors teach rather than do research.

• Urging administrators to take responsibility for graduation rates.

Paying extra attention to new students makes sense, says Rick Dalton of the Foundation for Excellent Schools, a Vermont non-profit organization that helps low-income students and families plan for college. "So many people think that once kids get to college they're OK, and that's not the case," Dalton says. "For many of these kids, the problems are just beginning."

Alcorn State University, a historically black college in Mississippi, raised graduation rates in part by assigning academic and social counselors to each freshman and sophomore, reducing class sizes and requiring all faculty to teach at least one freshman class.

Such programs are especially helpful for students whose parents didn't go to college, Dalton says.

"So often what happens is that the first-generation college kid calls home around Columbus Day and says, 'Mom, I'm unhappy. I'm going to come home,' " he says. "Mom doesn't know how to deal with it."

Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education, which represents colleges, says the recommendations are good, but the Web site's statistics are inaccurate because they omit transfer students, who make up about 30% of students.

"Excluding those students from graduation rates is like calculating average daily temperature and excluding October, November and December. You get a number, but it's largely meaningless."

Carey argues that the statistics hold up because only one in three transfer students graduate on time.