Yet, if we strip graduation rates down to the bare essentials by removing the layers of economics and politics, what does the statistic really convey? Is a low graduation rate necessarily bad?  Certainly, poor teaching and advising can fail to equip students with the tools needed to succeed in their studies. But good teaching involves holding high standards and helping students jump over the high bar, while ultimately letting the ones who fail know that their work is inadequate to move forward.

In that same line of thinking, is a high graduation rate necessarily good? A selective school that only admits superior students who have a high probability of success leaves motivated students of weaker ability out in the cold.  On the flip side, educators can raise graduation rates simply by lowering course rigor (less writing or math, shorter readings, etc.) to accommodate the wide variance of ability and motivation in less selective schools.

With graduation rates as the backdrop, we turn to a December 2 column in the Chronicle, “College Grad Rates Stay Exactly the Same,” by Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector.

In this column, Carey presents graduation rate statistics from the Beginning Postsecondary Survey of the National Center for Education Statistics that highlight the differences in graduation rate between various groups of students.  I take no issue with the reporting of such statistics, but Carey’s conclusion about the report deserves some analysis:

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1687