Broadly speaking, there are two ways to increase the number of students graduating with college degrees in Virginia: enroll more students or improve the completion rates of students already enrolled. The brain-dead way is to enroll more students, regardless of their odds of graduating, with the hope that some will manage to earn their degrees. Such a strategy would require an expensive expansion of the higher-ed system and it would saddle a lot of young people with debt that they would find difficult to pay off should they never acquire that sheepskin. The smart way is to focus on improving results for students already enrolled.
I beat up on Virginia’s colleges and universities a lot, but I give the devil its due. One of the strengths of Virginia’s system of higher education is the high percentage of students who do graduate. According to data published by Tod Massa on the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) research blog, Virginia’s 70% graduation is the second highest in the country, tied with Iowa and trailing only Delaware.
The University of Virginia and College of William & Mary are standouts by this measure, with graduation rates around 90%. (What’s more, the vast majority of those graduate within four years.) The laggards, not surprisingly, cater to lower-income populations — African-Americans, in the case of Norfolk State University and Virginia State University, and Appalachian whites, in the case of the University of Virginia at Wise. In many instances, students from poor families may lack the financial resources to pay for years of tuition, fees and other expenses.
If Virginia wants to achieve the goal articulated by former Governor Bob McDonnell to graduate a cumulative 100,000 additional students from Virginia institutions by 2025, the most cost-effective path (for taxpayers and the students themselves) is to improve upon an already high graduation rate. That might be difficult for UVa and W&M — how do you improve on perfect? — but extra focus might be warranted for Virginia Commonwealth University and Old Dominion University as well as the three mentioned above.
— JAB
