For-Profit Colleges Compute Their Own Graduation Rates

Autor/in	Blumenstyk, Goldie
Titel	For-Profit Colleges Compute Their Own Graduation Rates
Quelle	In: Chronicle of Higher Education, (2012) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0009-5982
Schlagwörter	Higher Education; Criticism; Federal Government; Information Dissemination; Graduation Rate; Proprietary Schools; Computation; Criteria; Differences; Time to Degree; Organizational Communication; Educational Attainment; School Statistics; Educational Indicators + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Kritik; Bundesregierung; Informationsverbreitung; Unterscheiden; Bildungsabschluss; Bildungsgut; Educational indicato; Bildungsindikator
Abstract	For-profit colleges are some of the biggest critics of the federal graduation rate, arguing that it gives an inaccurate image of their institutions. They point out that the official calculation doesn't take into account the vast majority of the students who attend their institutions, most of whom are neither "first-time" nor "full-time." So major for-profit institutions, including the University of Phoenix and American Public, DeVry, and Kaplan Universities, now compute and publicize their own alternative graduation or "completion rates," saying that these better reflect the nature of their student bodies and their institutional missions. But with each college company using different criteria, their efforts end up clouding the picture further, rather than clarifying anything. The use of these self-developed rates can also be deceptive, say some critics, especially when colleges publish them alongside other graduation statistics that are not comparable. The federal government contributes to the confusion. For-profits and other colleges with programs covered by the new "gainful employment" regulation are required to compute and publish an "on time completion rate," which many consider misleading and mostly meaningless. For this rate, colleges determine how many students have completed each degree each year and then report the proportion of those graduates who completed within the normal period of time, which is four years for a bachelor's and two for an associate or a master's degree. So if five students graduated with bachelor's degrees between June 2010 and July 2011, and they all managed to do it in just four years, the college's "on time completion rate" would be 100 percent, even if 95 others who started the program four years earlier all dropped out. (ERIC).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10