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ASU Board of Trustees Addresses

Retention and Graduation Rate Goals

Story by Sam Calhoun

David P. Haney, ASU associate vice-chancellor for academic affairs, gave a report on ASU retention and graduation rate goals to the ASU Board of Trustees on Friday, March 30, in response to an emphasis placed on the subject by UNC System President Erskine Bowles.

Currently, ASU ranks third out of fifteen UNC schools in quality measures, with a mean SAT score of 1131, a first-year retention rate of 85.8 percent, a five-year graduation rate of 57.6 percent and a six-year graduation rate of 64 percent.

By using methods recommended by the ASU Student Achievement Team, formerly called the ASU Retention Management Team, ASU hopes to increase first-year retention rates to 86 percent by fall 2008 and to 90 percent by fall 2011, four-year full-time student graduation rates to 64 percent by fall 2008 and to 70 percent by fall 2011 (Haney did not provide targets for five-year graduation rates) and six-year graduation rates to 66 percent by fall 2008 and to 75 percent by fall 2011.

“We will start out modest but have a sharp increase later in the cycle,” said Haney. “These numbers are more ambitious than the goals originally presented to the general administration.”

Studying these findings and attempting to increase retention and graduation rates, the Student Achievement Team found multiple subgroups of students at risk for not completing their degrees. These subgroups include males, out-of-state students, students with financial need not met, students who are not performing academically in the first year of college, underrepresented minority students (with the exception of Asian students) and students with lower entrance measures, such as SAT scores and GPAs.

Taking these findings, the Student Achievement Team—“made up of anyone who has anything to do with students, including staff from financial aid, honors, student development and personnel from the academic and business side,” said Haney—made a plan for retaining these at-risk students.

The plan includes offering more freshman seminars and learning communities, providing more advising and early interventions, conducting research leading to a revision of academic policies, providing academic support for at-risk students, forming a partnership between academic affairs and student development, doing student research, offering classes in student leadership and developing more offerings for community service and service learning opportunities.

In addition, ASU is accepting 200 fewer students before January every year to hold some places for later admits, offering more programs for sophomores (another at-risk group) and summer programs, starting a male leadership and skill development course and continuing research on the at-risk subgroups.

“We’re beginning to talk to those who have graduated and learning what they did and how to make the [at-risk groups] more like them,” said Haney.