Diplomas and Dropouts

– Data in new report shows Kentucky ranks low for college graduation rates

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is bound to raise eyebrows in Kentucky, especially once people see the ranking of college graduation rates I assembled below from the data in that report.


Of course, this ranking shouldn’t be a huge surprise. After all, Kentucky’s college freshmen require remedial courses at an astonishingly high rate.

Among Kentucky schools, the worst graduation rate was for Spalding University, where only 24 percent graduated from the entering class of 2001. However, other schools had single-digit rates, so this was not the worst performance in the country.

At the other end of the Kentucky spectrum, Transylvania and Center College tied for the best rate of 73 percent. The top rate in the country was 100 percent at the Arkansas Baptist College while a number of other schools posted rates above 90 percent.

One of the really big disappointments in the new report is the University of Louisville’s very poor ranking among comparably competitive schools in the South. U of L ranked third from the bottom of all “Very Competitive” colleges in the “South” region with a rather dismal 44 percent graduation rate.

The report even singles out U of L as an example of a place where something is amiss, comparing this school to James Madison University in Virginia. Both schools have virtually identical enrollments, tuition rates, and recruitment competitiveness, but James Madison graduates 81 percent of its students.

In fact, the average graduation rate across the country for similarly competitive schools is 62.3 percent.

Someone really needs to look into what’s wrong with U of L.

For more details, see our new Wiki item titled “Kentucky College Graduation Rates Versus Other States.”