Let’s Analyze Student Completion Rates in Proper Context

Apples and oranges comparisons are never very helpful, and that’s exactly the problem with many studies that are coming out these days in analysis of student completion rates on America’s college campuses. Dr. Craig Clagett, Vice President of Planning, Marketing and Assessment at Carroll Community College, does a great job of tackling this issue in a recent article that was published in Inside Higher Education, following the release of  Complete College America’s “Time is the Enemy” report.

In the piece, Dr. Clagett points out why any useful measurement of community colleges’ success with student completion must fully take into account the many differences between the students served in our open access institutions, as compared to those attending selective four-year colleges and universities.

Notes Dr. Clagett in the article: “Our current national completion measures for community colleges underestimate the true progress of students, presenting a misleading picture of the performance of these open-admissions institutions.” In the piece, he calls for a new set of metrics to more effectively track student completion rates and notes how Maryland’s community colleges are leading the way in providing a successful measurement model.