ISU Gets D+ Grade for Graduation Rates
There comes a time when all universities and colleges have to reevaluate their strategy of increasing their graduation rates, right now is that time for Indiana State University. According to ISU Vice Provost of Enrollment Management Jason Trainer, the first step in increasing graduation is working on admissions.
“The more students you strictly deny, the higher your graduation rate might be,” said. “We obviously have a lot of excellent and outstanding students, but we also take risks on students that other institutions are not going to take a risk on.”
Photo from ISU Newsroom
According to National Center for Education Statistics, ISU’s current overall graduation rate for 2019 is 41%. This includes full and part time students and students who graduate at any year rate (standard 4-8 years).
Also, according to NCES, ISU is considered a “small city” school because of the 20-1 student to faculty ratio and location. Therefore, there are a lot of reasons as to why students want to come to ISU for school, but a big reason is the small town feel while still getting a larger university education.
“We are that nice fit between an overly large research institution and a very small university. Students still want some of the traditional campus experiences like greek life, sports and research opportunities while still knowing the people next to them and having a good relationship with their professors,” Trainer said.
On the other hand, there is a new reason as to why students transfer out of ISU to attend another university. A main piece of this is because universities are now allowed to recruit college students to attend their university. This legislation was just recently passed, and it could affect ISU in a negative way.
“We were concerned that other schools in the state would reach out to students having success at their current institution,” Trainer said. “If a student leaves ISU, they are not going to give you a list of reasons why they left. But we can find out if they re-enrolled somewhere else, so far there haven’t been any significant changes in transfer rates.”
Some students transfer because they did not get accepted to a bigger Indiana school like Indiana University or Ball State, therefore they come to ISU for a year or two to boost up their GPA and the criteria they need to apply elsewhere and then transfer to get their degree at their first desired school.
“I know a few people who come here to raise their GPA’s then they will apply to a bigger school and transfer there after being accepted,” ISU senior Pamela Silies said. “I have never heard of that happening until I came here and talked with some students who were considering doing this.”
Apart from transferring, one of the biggest variables that keep a student from graduating in four years at ISU is changing their major too late. Therefore, ISU is seeing a lot of students graduate in six years. This being said, Trainer is looking for a solution to get students to graduate sooner.
“We look at four-year and a six-year graduation rates and what we are trying to do is get students on the right track earlier, so they can stick with their same major all four years. Our current four-year graduation rate is 23% and we are hoping by 2023 we move it up to 33%,” Trainer said.