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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why is GMU’s graduation rate only 67%?[/quote]

Yikes. That’s atrocious. [/quote]

I dunno--I  think lowish graduation rates can be a good thing.  It tells you a school is not a diploma mill, not just handing out degrees for showing up (or sometimes showing up). 
GMU's rate is actually 69.2% for the most recent cohort (kids who started in 2012--they do it by 6 year rates) which is the average for VA schools.  But it's the largest VA public and an R1 university.  It has a large traditional entering freshman student cohorts--what is reflected in this data, but also even more transfer students, non-traditional age students and graduate students.  GMU accepts a wide range of students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds  --but it's also a rigorous, major research institution.  If all those students were able to graduate I'd worry that it was rubber stamping degrees.  There are many states that have public colleges that essentially do that--sometimes even the flagship.

Christopher Newport strikes me as interesting here -it's devoted to undergraduates and much smaller in scale.  Just 10 years earlier it used to have graduation rates lower than GMUs --58% (which is somewhat damning since it ONLY serves undergrads and a much smaller population ) but it has really been growing them over the years in this regard so it's latest number is 76%--not as high as the highest (Washington & Lee at 94%, UVA at 93%) but edging in on JMU and VT who are at 81%.  An interesting number also is College of William & Mary at 88.6%.  I wonder if it's telling of W&M of being significantly harder than UVA--they attract similarly qualified students but have a lower graduation rate.
http://research.schev.edu/gradrates/grs10.asp  [/quote]

So then you’re worried about the rise in graduation rates as that indicates more rubber-stamping? Don’t twist yourself in a knot defending the crappy grad rate. It’s not a good thing. [/quote]

The hard tech schools tend to have somewhat lower graduation rates.   It is just harder to finish engineering in 4 years.  MIT 4 year graduation rate is below UVA and W&M, but it has much higher standardized test scores.  5 and 6 years rise quite a bit. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/academic-life/graduation-and-retention/

UVA's biggest strength in USNews rating has been graduation rate.  It has helped them in rankings and for years kept them even or above Berkeley and others.  W&M, while slightly lower than UVA, is 3rd highest for 4 years for public schools, I believe.

Regarding GMU, one thing that I believe has been shown is that schools that have more commuter students and a lower percentage living on or near campus have lower graduation rates.  This is why starting 15 years or so ago, a lot of schools started to work to increase on campus housing.  [/quote]

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