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Michigan’s Wayne State University has a very low completion rate. The latest figures indicate that an abysmal 32 percent of students graduate from the school.
But with new reform efforts targeting college graduation, Wayne State has decided to make some changes. The wrong changes. According to an article by David Jesse in the Detroit Free Press:
A new, tougher admissions policy proposed by Wayne State President Allan Gilmour would deny admission to the type of academic low-achiever who is currently accepted.
The new standard — which would apply to students seeking admission in fall 2013 — must be approved by the Board of Governors. It would not affect current students.”This can’t be an open-access university,” Gilmour told the Free Press in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “If we’re admitting people who we shouldn’t admit, that isn’t fair to them.”
Wayne State hasn’t had a lot of success graduating students in recent years; it has the lowest graduation rate in the state, in the 30 percent range. That’s something Gilmour said he became committed to increasing when he took over more than a year ago.
Critics worry that Gilmour’s new, more selective admissions policy would mostly exclude low-income, minority Detroit residents.
Furthermore, what’s really “not fair” here probably isn’t the admissions policy. As by Ben Miller and Phuong Ly argued in this magazine a year ago:
Most students who drop out of college don’t fail out of college. The worst colleges also tend to plead ignorance as to how to get better. But the strategies employed by colleges that successfully graduate at-risk students aren’t particularly groundbreaking. Researchers have been documenting effective methods of preventing dropouts for decades. Most are commonsensical: pay attention to students, and give them the support they need.
If a college has low graduation rates, it’s probably because it’s not doing a good job educating the students it has. It’s an institutional problem. Wayne State won’t actually solve its problems by just making the school more selective.
Furthermore, Wayne State is public college in Detroit; the whole point of the institution is to be accessible to low-income, minority Detroit residents.
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Equal Opportunity Cynic on December 16, 2011 9:09 PM:
If a college has low graduation rates, it’s probably because it’s not doing a good job educating the students it has.
There are so many problems with that statement, especially in a setting like Detroit for an institution that in the past has trying to maintain some semblance of access. Tut-tutting about their attempts to become more selective is missing the point; they're just responding to the incentives. If you want them to be more diligent about educating possibly underprepared Detroiters, then you need metrics that reflect that outcome. Grad rate is among the bluntest and worst-suited one in use.
Brad Roth on December 16, 2011 10:27 PM:
Misleading from start to finish. First, the 32% graduation rate disparages part-time students (40%) who cannot be expected to graduate within 6 years, and does not count transfer students (40% of entering students). Second, the peremptory "not doing a good job" conclusion lacks any regard to the challenges where so many students lack both economic resources (47% are Pell Grant recipients) and adequate K-12 preparation. Third, Wayne isn't trying to "solve its problems by just making the school more selective"; a Learning Communities project has been implemented to improve the student experience, especially for those not yet acculturated to college, and it has substantially improved retention rates in the last few years. Fourth, Wayne State's "whole point" is to make the benefits of a major national research university accessible across the broadest possible spectrum, to bring together students from all walks of life. In 15 years of teaching at Wayne, I have seen more success in this regard than I could have imagined.
Crissa on December 19, 2011 6:41 PM:
Ooo, hornets you stirred.
Rather defensive - of course graduation rates reflect poorly upon community colleges, after all, I've taken courses over ten years to improve my lot in life and never graduated - but that doesn't stop it from having the lowest of its peers.
I don't think making students jump through hoops will work to raise graduation rates. There was a previous article on this blog about this:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/help_that_doesnt_help.php
kenny hart on October 10, 2012 9:58 PM:
I think Wayne State could improve the graduation rate if there was more student respect, some teachers there treat students bad there, they hire any teacher and when students are treated unfairly there is not anything done about it, I think their disability department could be better to help student that need it, the police could do a better job in keeping the campus safe, they require more classes then other universities to get a degree, they set you up to fail so you have to pay more to retake the class. The heat is really bad in the art building and sometimes it is so cold, the staff and teachers are very negative, i would never send my kids to this school.