11 Public Universities with the Worst Graduation Rate
 

11 Public Universities with the Worst Graduation Rate

I believe the graduation rates are calculated using the percentage of students who earn a four-year degree within six years.

Worst of the lot: Southern University at New Orleans, Louisiana, with a graduation rate of just four percent (!). The median SAT score is 715. Given that you get 600 points just for showing up and writing your name, that is pathetic.

In the immortal words of Bluto: "Seven years of college down the drain."

Hm. Looks like most are branch campuses?

You forgot to mention that they have a 48.4% acceptance rate. This scares me.... How bad do the other 51.6% of applicants have to be?

As Carnation pointed out, Southern University NO is a branch university of Southern University an HBCU. The students served by Southern may have extremely low SATs but they come from a very poor and underserved area of New Orleans. This is not an unexpected revelation. Louisiana has many open enrollment universities that take area students. If a few students can actually succeed out of this environment, I am pleased.

Wow. I remember when I was in high school there were kids who got 12's and 13's on their ACTs. You apparently get 9 just for writing your name. :eek:

I come from a very small, farming community, so it wasn't like I went to a competitive high school that encouraged applying to college, but this still shocked me.

PNC (Purdue North Central) is definitely the location for Northwest Indiana students who know they have to go to college but really don't want to.

^^ This! I was about to make a similar point.

I live in an area with one large public university, two small private religiously affiliated universities, two branches of a large state schools, and two junior colleges. Graduation rates are not all they are cracked up to be. For example, a student may start out at JCC because he or she didn't have the credentials to get into U of L. He or she does really well and transfers to U of L. The student shows up as a drop out of JCC, but does earn a degree at U of L. Statistics don't always tell the entire story.

Another thing I noticed was that most of the schools listed has reasonable tuition rates. They may be going after those "disadvantaged" students AA mentioned above and providing them with a chance to succeed.

I don't understand putting branches on here. Don't the majority of the students transfer to the main campus?

No the majority do not. Students are usually at the branch near me because:

1. They can't afford to pay the room and board. The branch enables them to live at home and earn a degree.
2. They don't have the academic chops to get into the main campus. They pretty much stay at the academic level and take 5-7 years to graduate.
3. They have to pay for their own school and have to work lots of hours to afford school.
4. They are afraid of the size of the main campus and like the branch's size.
5. They have helicopter parents who don't want them to go away to school and buy them a brand new car to stay close to home.

Noooooooope. Very few, in fact.

This. In poor southern Appalachian Ohio, 1 and 3 especially. Ohio University's Branches are very popular around here. I work with many different technicians who have been taking one class at a time over the last 6 or 7 years. Several of them want to go back and finish, but just don't have the means to anymore. They go to OU-C, OU-S, OU-L, OU-Z, and OU-E because as high school graduates, they know they have to have SOME sort of higher education in order to get a decent paying job. So they start out at one of those OU branches, and get an entry level or part-time job somewhere. Factory, bank, administrative, etc. But they get older, life changes, they get married, have kids, and within 5-7 years after high school graduation, they're only halfway or two thirds through their college course load to get their bachelors. But in the meantime, since they've been working those past 5-7 years, they're gaining work experience. They're given raises, minor promotions, and get the opportunity to get special training and certifications through their employer. Finishing their degree no longer becomes a priority. Their job has become more demanding, and their personal lives no longer allow them to do so.

I work with a girl who technically got her degree from one of those OU branches. For her major though, she had to take quite a few classes at the main campus. That's not uncommon. It was hard, because it was a two hour round trip drive twice a week, but she made it work because she badly wanted her BA. Not only that, but enrolling in those classes through the branch versus the main campus was much more affordable. She took those classes with Main Campus students who paid a hell of a lot more than she did.

That is not the case with the OU branches. You can get a 4 year through them, including a BSN. It's shitty that this study included students who transfer to other schools. It would be nice to see the statistics without that factored in.

I've heard some real horror stories about Southern University in Baton Rouge, i.e., professors who refused to teach, telling the class "I got mine." Just ridiculous if true. Some of these schools have huge administrative/cultural issues.

As to Rogers State in Claremore, OK. That's really just unacceptable. Their President makes over $200K and this:

http://capitolbeatok.com/reports/rog...100-000-a-year

As to the other Oklahoma school, Cameron, it's a 4-year liberal arts university. It's close enough to Norman and Edmond to assume it's mostly just local kids who transfer away once they get comfortable with college. Also, locally, the oilfield is booming. I see HS dropouts who make $60,000+ salaries working in the oil fields.

Just to be clear, the article isn't talking about Southern University, it is talking about Southern in New Orleans. Southern University main campus has had issues in the past with pass rates for it's Law School and Nursing School, but they have improved dramatically.

While the Ohio State branches are not listed, you can now get some four-year degrees there. When I was in school (in the dark ages), the only degree you could get at a branch was and Education degree. They started expanding it to most of the liberal arts and social sciences.

tOSU starts many students here that don't get in to the C-bus campus and a good number do transfer after their get their basic requirements done. It's more or less a trial run to see how well they do after 1 or 2 years.

Hey...here's something I actually know about!

Actually, we do offer full 4 year degrees at all of our KSU branches. The amount of programs offered are pretty small in number as compared to main campus and the larger branches.

Most of our branch students fall under one of these:
Non-traditional students
Students working on their associates
Undergraduates who have lower GPA's and attend and get their grades up. They tend to transfer to the main campus after doing so. (Our new/incoming freshman had the highest GPA in the history of KSU, so it's slightly more competitive)

That would expain why the graduation rates are so low. It's not exactly a true reflection of the students specific situations.

I talked to a few people at work today. They tended to agree with me, but more who start at the OU branches seem to transfer to OU or OSU than I realize.

However, they also brought to light that there are students there who are strictly there to abuse the system. They get grants and loans, and then are able to withdraw that money, and then use it for anything other than education purposes. They were telling me stories about students who'd withdraw aid money and spend it on drugs, their boyfriends would take it, make car payments, rent payments, etc. One guys entire family lived off that money for a year or so while he was enrolled. They enroll with no intention of ever graduating, and no intention of ever paying that money back.

How does that even work? I was a little in disbelief over that.

It certainly does happen. I've been told that my state is working on cracking down on much of that, as some students are enrolling in universities (sometimes multiple universities), getting money and dropping out weeks into terms.

Yeah, I heard it from a student at the BR campus.

This type of article is exactly why it is always best to dig a little deeper to find out what the real deal is.