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Expanding the Timeframe for Success: Introducing the 8-Year Graduation Rate

ByBlake Decker

We continue our blog series on graduation outcomes by introducing what will be a new metric framework for some readers: the IPEDS Outcome Measures. When most people in higher education talk about graduation rates, they are typically referring to the percentage of students who start at a college or university as first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students (i.e., traditional first-time entering students (FTICs)) and complete a bachelor’s degree at that first institution. While including this main group of students, the Outcome Measures (OM) also track outcomes for full-time, non-first-time entering (or transfer) students, as well as those who start as part-time students for both FTIC and transfer cohorts. Building on the traditional 4- and 6-year graduation rates, the OM data also extends graduation rate calculations to 8-years post-matriculation for student cohorts. Throughout the course of the next few blog posts, we will delve into the data for these respective cohorts, beginning with the traditionally defined group of full-time FTIC students using the most-recent OM data for the 2014 cohort.

Statewide Averages for Public Universities in Texas

  • The first visualization (grouped bar chart) below shows data for 4-, 6-, and 8-year graduation rates across all public universities in Texas for full-time, first-time entering students who completed their bachelor’s degree at their originating university.
  • Just over one-third of the students in the 2014 cohort completed their degree within 4 years of initial enrollment. That percentage jumped to 57% for the “Bachelors in 6 Years” rate, bumping up slightly to 59% when the timeframe extends to 8 years after entering the university.
  • The second visualization (stacked bar chart) shows the same data with the bar segments stacked together. The labels in each segment pertain to the cumulative length of the bar across the three time periods, as opposed to the length of each segment. The first segment label of 35% (light blue) aligns to the 4-year graduation rate, while the second segment label of 57% (darker blue) aligns to the 6-year graduation rate, and the third segment label of 59% (purple) aligns to the 8-year graduation rate.
  • For increased readability, the stacked bar chart version is used to show all 35 public universities in Texas in one visualization below.
IPEDS Outcome Measures: Graduation Rates for Public Universities in Texas

Graduation Rates by Public University in Texas

  • There were three universities in the OM data for the 2014 cohort that had more than half of their students finish their bachelor’s degree at that institution within 4 years: UT Austin (69%), Texas A&M University (56%), and UT Dallas (52%). UT Austin’s 6-year graduation rate jumped to 87% with an additional 2 percentage point jump to 89% for their 8-year graduation rate, while TAMU experienced a 26-point jump to 82% for the 6-year graduation rate.
  • When removing the state’s two flagship universities (UT Austin and Texas A&M University) from the 2014 cohort data, the aggregate graduation rates for the other 33 public universities in Texas were 28% (4-year rate), 49% (6-year rate), and 52% (8-year rate) respectively.
  • At the 8-year graduation rate mark, there were 15 public universities in Texas who had at least 50% of their full-time, first-time entering student cohort complete their bachelor’s degree at their university.

So What?

As we look down the right-hand side of the stacked bar chart, we can see that some universities experienced a higher increase in graduation rates when moving from the 6-year to the 8-year timeframe. Universities with the highest percentage point increases appear to be those that have traditionally served a higher percentage of non-White students. We will look more closely at the association between longer-term graduation rates and the percentage of non-White students served in our next blog post.