College graduation – Still more insight that it’s K to 12 that mostly counts

In what is now part one on this subject, I pointed to the strong indication in the available data that relatively low graduation rates in Kentucky’s public colleges are due to correspondingly low percentages of students who enter the system with adequate preparation.

I noticed something else in the graph in that earlier post – there are wide variations in the gaps each school has between the percentage of students entering with adequate preparation versus the percentage that eventually graduates (within six years or less of entry).

This graph shows that gap information.


The really big surprise here is Kentucky State University (KSU). KSU doesn’t graduate very many of its students, but considering the extremely poor preparation level of the college’s entering classes (about 85% are under-prepared), KSU actually does a lot better than some other state schools in getting a proportion of those kids through to a degree.

Of particular interest, the two worst performers in my adequate preparation to graduation gap analysis are Kentucky’s most competitive schools, UK and U of L. Considering the relatively high preparation rate of their entering classes, these two schools lose a lot of kids.

Particularly in the case of U of L, the losses seem excessive, especially when you consider that U of L’s graduation rate for students who entered in 2001 was only 44 percent, while UK’s grad rate was nearly 40 percent higher.