Retention rates grow
But are improvement efforts enough?
Retention rates among FTIAC’s—students who attend school for the first time in any college— have increased while the number of individuals on probation has seen a decrease following several initiatives put into place by
Eastern Michigan University.
“We’ve started to cut into our probation rate, so that same year we increased our retention rate for our FTIACs, the year prior, 2007-08, we had a probation rate of 30 percent. So based on all of the different initiatives we’re doing, we’ve cut that to 19 percent for the end of fall semester,” said Lynette Findley, assistant vice president of retention and student success at EMU.”
PDF: EMU retention rates
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Changes being made to EMU policies
Findley said she realized just how important it was to get the probation rates under control after doing research.
“Data will tell you that students that finish their first semester on probation, their likelihood of finishing in four or six years is not strong,” she said. “In fact, only 12 students who were on probation one graduated between 2006 and those years in a four year period and only 59 in six years. That’s how woefully low and that’s how important it is to get off to a great start and make sure you don’t start on probation.”
Findley said starting in 2013, vast changes will be made to EMU’s probation policy.
“I think it’s a travesty that we have a probation one, two and three policy,” she said. “That’s about to change next year and it will be more in line with financial aid and the regulations of financial aid.”
Findley is also suggesting for it to be a requirement for students to take math and English during their first year.
“Students that take math and English, especially math, those students have a stronger six year graduation rate if they take that class their first semester or the first year,” she said. “The retention rate goes up for students that take these courses. For the 2003 cohort, students that graduated six years ago, students that had even taken a remedial class, the six-year graduation rate was 39 percent.”
“Students who did not, their rates were 28 percent. Students that did not have to take the remedial course and just took the gen ed requirement their first or second semester, that graduation rate increased to 56 percent.
It’s about what we’re learning about our student populations. I would like to see it where we require students to take math their first semester. Those are critical classes to help students throughout to increase graduation rates.”
Findley said a number of the initiatives were created under the Student Success Council.
“It was formally known as the Student Retention council which started four years ago,” Findley said. “It was in 2007 that we started and we created a lot of different initiatives to increase the retention and graduation rates of our students. You have these initiatives that we started with the 2009 cohort FTIAC [first year in any college] class.”
Initiatives and programs responsible for increase in rates
One of the things the success council changed was the way the Promote Academic Survival and Success program operated. Before changes were made, it was known as a “voluntary program” and students were allowed to take courses as they pleased.
“What I thought back then in 2008 was we were letting students come in without any academic provisions to make sure they were taking care of the things they needed to so we overhauled it,” she said.
One of the changes made was that students were now required to sign a contract with outlined stipulations.
“In that contract we stated that they should not take more than 12 credit hours and they could not get involved with any type of sororities, fraternities or social groups and they had to meet with the Holman Success G.A. every other week for academic support and workshops,” Findley said. “They must do that and if they didn’t they weren’t allowed to register for the next semester.”
Findley said the results were “amazing.”
“By doing this you’d be amazed to that’s how we were able to increase in one year by looking at the population and making sure we were giving them mandatory type services,” she said. In 2009, we had the first year retention rate for that cohort and it was 76 percent compared to 70 percent in the past and they were the highest group of any rates that year which is phenomenal in higher education.”
Findley said others within the higher education community began to take notice after seeing retention rates increase.
“We had people saying, ‘well, how’d you do that?’” she said. “You have to look at that population there and continue to plan on from there, for which we did for the next year. We had a five percent increase. The goal is to do better. We are maintaining that and you have to look at those cohorts over the next six years. You won’t see a change in the graduation rates until then.”
Findley said the university has also modified the way academic advising works.
“What we tried to do with academic advising is that once a student declares a major, they’re supposed to go directly to that college for advising and we thought that was so unfair to students,” she said. “Generally faculty members would agree that they would prefer to advise students after they have gotten gen eds out of the way. That’s what faculty members should be doing is that major advising overall. What we decided to do was we changed the way we did advising. All of the advisors are assigned by college in the Academic Advising Center now.”
Findley said advisors now have more of a hands-on approach with students since they now send out welcome notes to new students and various types of communications.
“I didn’t want any student to feel as if they hadn’t been touched by an academic advisor,” she said. “Freshman students who started with that same cohort could not tell you, unless they chose not to read the emails, that they had not had contact with an academic advisor. What I wanted the staff in academic advising to do was to help them and give them any information they needed.”
Findley reiterated the fact that the nation as a whole needs to learn how to educated at risk populations but that EMU is on the path to figuring out how to do so.
“We should happy that we have basically learned how to start doing this,” she said. “You’d be surprised how many universities aren’t doing this or don’t know how to do this. We could be a national model for this. We’re headed in the right direction and you’ll see the numbers.”
The university community responds
History professor Mark Higbee believes EMU’s students deserve more from the university and that more initiatives need to be created and implemented in addition to what is already done.
“I’ve studied the issue and the interventions that are done at other schools could be done here and that’s a complicated thing,” he said. “We should create a first year program for entering students that says take this because it will build your skills for college success and do that and implement that.”
“We put most first year students in big lecture classes and the get lost and they get bored and they drop out… Our general education program produces dropouts. That doesn’t mean that I’m saying that any of the gen ed courses are bad courses. They just often are not appropriate for where are students are. I think our graduation rates are terrible compared to what we should be achieving and it’s terrible compared to what our students deserve,” he said. “We could do a lot better.”
Higbee said the university should also raise the admission standards.
“EMU admits all kinds of students,” Higbee said. “Some of our very best students would do very well if they could go and afford to pay tuition at Harvard. Then we have students here that are admitted that are illiterate. They can’t read a page. That first group that could go to Harvard do very well at Eastern. The second group, they can’t get through their classes and they should not be able to get through their classes without being literate.”
“I think we should raise admission standards. We admit students who are not succeeding in college I don’t know how many that is but I see them every year. Then we admit students who are at risk that could do well in college and we should give them that support. I think those are two different groups and instead of distinguishing between the two of them the university treats them as one group.”
Higbee said there is “broad agreement” among faculty members that EMU has an admissions problem.
“We admit students that are unprepared for college and that we have no plans to get them up to speed and I think most of my faculty colleagues regard it as immoral,” he said. “I don’t think that explains all of our attrition problems though. Our potential at EMU to increase our graduation rate is immense and unlimited but we can’t do it by just doing the same old things we’ve been doing. It needs to be systemic and address all first year students. Students who are academically promising and students who are at risk, we lose both types of students and we ought to address that but we don’t.”
EMU student Lesly Dencamp believes the university is doing all it can to increase the rates.
“What more can they do?” Dencamp said. “I’m proud to say I go to Eastern and I think most of us are because it’s definitely a school of opportunity.”
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by Seriously?
This article is complete garbage. It is not only completely inappropriate to single out one sentence of a man’s quote to make the story seem catchy and controversial to an individual reading the front page, but to have one professor as the representative of the entire EMU community is terrible journalism. How many times is the Echo going to consistently fall short of appropriate interviewing? If you are going to trash General Education, why not ask them about their actual program? Why did we shrink the auditorium sizes when we renovated Pray-Harrold? Because we shrunk our class sizes. The goal of Gen. Ed. is to eliminate these large class sizes. The largest class offered this semester is likely the BIO 120 course of 128 students. That’s not a Gen. Ed. course, and was done out of necessity due to budget cuts and limited faculty. So to say that General Education is producing dropouts is pathetic.
Should be become an elitist institution that doesn’t let anyone in? Absolutely not. Individuals that get admitted are not illiterate or incompetent, it seems to be cynics at the university that are so used to the same old story that just want to moan and complain about what’s wrong with the university instead of being part of a solution. This administration is different, the student body is different. Our goal is to make EMU homely and a great university, not just living in other university’s and the state’s shadow.
Flag for moderationby Give me a break
And yet, despite all of these “improvements”, I’ve had more success navigating my academic career with a pencil and a piece of paper that lists my Gen. Ed. requirements, than having the “help” of the various Academic Advising groups on campus. I wouldn’t trust Academic Advising at this university to guess my weight, much less guide me through four plus years of academia with accuracy, integrity, and a sense of ownership. Oh, and whether Prof. Higbee’s comment was taken out of context or not, he’s right- we do produce dropouts. Lots of them. Not me; I’m a 3.85 GPA. But make no mistake, they’re out there.
oh, and what’s up with the Academic Success Coaches? So now Eastern is really collecting that low-lying academic fruit, huh? Now we’re accepting people who need a babysitter to tell them how to go to class and do their homework?! Newsflash, idiots! This is COLLEGE!!! If you can’t do the basics, like show up,you shouldn’t be admitted! And yet we just take ‘em on in; give them money, hold their hands, wipe their noses and asses for them, and then wring our hands when they mysteriously are incapable of performing basic academic tasks themselves. A scholarship for being a flunkie? Are you effin’ kidding me?!
Give me a break, Eastern.
Flag for moderationby Rob
Dropouts and under-performers are everywhere. When I was a MSU, I knew a lot of people who were complete disasters academically. My roommate during my freshman year, I swear, I can count on one hand the amount of times he went to class during the first semester and he was expelled. Getting to college is one thing but sometimes when people realize no one is holding their hand and pushing them to go to class or study they simply don’t. If graduating from college was easy, everyone would.
Flag for moderationby Chicken or Egg
Why do we admit students that seem to be unqualified to attend EMU? Maybe it is because our funding is so offensive from the state legislature, we are forced to admit more students than we normally would to maintain any sort of funding. At the same time to say we aren’t helping those students is false. EMU has Math 97 and Math 98 which are practically 9th and 10th grade math courses and English 120 for those who still need comprehension skills.
When the government tells us we need to be more helpful to those, yet cut money from us, it puts the university in a position to not only admit students for dollars but aid them in order to actually have them succeed. It’s sort of a morally immoral obligation. We may or may not should admit students with lower standards but we do have avenues to get them help. The help is not there to babysit, so quit oversimplifying. The help is there to tutor and help them with strictly academics. Are you saying that a student who was tutored through high school isn’t allowed to go to college because they weren’t smart enough? What about unequal secondary education? Just because an individual grew up in Detroit and was poorly taught doesn’t mean they aren’t able to get an education beyond 12th grade. There are bright people that develop late or in different areas than the standard cookie cutter ACT and high school GPA.
The General Education system changed in 2007, and if you actually look at the charts they put in the Echo, the retention rates since its implementation have increased. Why is it that because one professor who has been here for X years and is part of the tenured was brainwashed by colleagues in Ann Arbor to think he goes to a ghetto school is the voice of the masses? Why? What about the people who actually have gone through General Education program? What do the students have to say?
Students drop out, and they drop out everywhere. However, did we ever take into account economic and social issues as to why they dropped out, not just their academic ability? Michigan students are of the traditional 4-year breed. We aren’t them, and we don’t want to be. We are accommodating because we maintain integrity and dammit the administration and students are trying to make chicken salad out of chicken poop with the negative old professors, negative stereotypes and our needs consistently falling on deaf ears in Lansing. Our students go from full-time to half-time. Take semesters off because of families, money and life.
I’m sick of people listening to one thing and because they’re used to things sucking they automatically think it does. Especially from a professor who’s integrity and ethos are at best questionable.
Flag for moderationby Rob
I agree, chicken or egg. I believe that if EMU wasn’t so close to UM, you wouldn’t get so many negative perceptions. I think EMU students are very bright on the whole. Non-traditional students may scew the numbers a far as graduation rates are concerned and emu has more than most.
Flag for moderationby Prof. Joanna Scott, Political Science
Re: Retention rates— Let me point out that “retention” is not the same as “graduation.” This last metric is the one that already is being used by this Governor to fund State Universities. Retention simply means students stay enrolled and pay tuition (or get aid). We take their money and don’t track where they go or if they even graduate. Our graduation rates are very poor by any State or national measure (and that’s using a 6 yr base!). We are just not delivering the educational opportunities to our students that we promise them when they enroll. The New York Times and the Free Press have both pointed out our the low grad. rates in the past and nothing seems to
Flag for moderationbe changing.
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It’s time we all took ownership of the problem directly— call it by its real name (not “retention”) and start planning some more effective strategies. Happily, our new Provost is making improving graduation rates one of her highest priorities.
by Katrease Stafford, Editor-in-Chief
Hello Professor Scott,
The first part of this two-part series examined the graduation rates and I included PDF files of the four-year and six-year graduation rates for readers to look over. The rates are broken down by race and the various academic colleges within EMU.
Here’s the link:
http://easternecho.com/index.php/article/2012/02/emu_graduation_rates_low
Flag for moderationby Just My 2 Sense
I’m glad for any and all efforts at retention and graduation increases. It would be sad to think that EMU (or any school) just wanted to take students’ money for as long as possible. General Education programs are an attempt to give students a well-rounded education and I approve of them. However, I think it is a huge, huge mistake that academic advising is organized around the gen ed program. Advising should be organized around the individual majors. For example, it is almost universally acknowledged by STEM majors that the Advising Center sucks. Do they really? No. But do they provide accurate, helpful information to science, math and technology majors? No. In fact, they are counterproductive. Potential STEM majors should be advised to take required classes asap and add gen eds as they go along. The counter-argument is that students should go to their faculty advisors. Faculty advising in STEM majors is almost as bad. Why? Because faculty are very very busy and advising is not high on their priority lists. I know faculty advisors who drop students without telling them or getting them new advisors; advisors who cannot be reached; and advisors who are out-of-date on requirements. I know many STEM students who end up putting in extra semesters/years or changing majors for lack of good advising. My recommendation is intrusive advising. Change the focus of the academic advising center to individual majors. Have the advisors become experts in 2 or 3 majors, and require freshmen, sophomores and juniors (senior year is too late for a degree audit!) be REQUIRED to meet with an advisor BEFORE they are allowed to register. BTW, increasing graduation rates has many far-reaching benefits. For the cash-focused administrators – more graduates graduating faster makes for a larger, happier alumni pool. More happy alumni are more inclined to donate to their alma maters.
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