 Dear reader,
Anyone following higher education coverage at The Hechinger Report knows we’ve spent many years covering America’s college completion crisis. Now the pandemic is eating away at some hard-won progress, meaning many students are dropping out, delaying higher education or taking a lot longer to graduate.
Lately, we’ve uncovered some unsettling facts about the way we measure graduation rates. Here’s one way to think about it: Imagine if we judged the performance of an airline by the percentage of its flights that take up to twice as long as scheduled to reach their destinations?
That would help you understand the way higher education measures success in graduating students.
Over the years, colleges have gradually moved the finish line to give themselves credit for success if students graduate in six years — or even eight.
Digging further, we found that white students at public colleges are two and a half times more likely to graduate than Black students – and 60 percent more likely to graduate than Latino students. What are the reasons for this? And what can we do about it, both on an institutional level and as a society?
These are some of the questions we’ll be exploring in the months to come. As always, we welcome your views, ideas and thoughts.
Liz Willen, Editor
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