Graduation rate at UNM lower than peer schools

Only about 42 percent of UNM students graduate within six years.

But there may be several underlying reasons for the less-than-impressive graduation rates, said Wynn Goering, vice provost of Academic Affairs.

“One of the things we’ve learned about our students is that they have far more off-campus obligations than students in similar places,” Goering said.

UNM students have far different lives compared to students at peer institutions, including the universities of Arizona and Colorado at Boulder, Goering said.

According to fall 2009 surveys conducted by UNM, 43 percent of incoming freshmen care for a dependent, compared with only 19 percent of students at other schools. And 22 percent of UNM students work more than 20 hours a week at an off-campus job, compared with just 5 percent of students at comparable schools.

Goering said these kinds of factors shouldn’t be ignored when comparing UNM’s graduation rate to other schools.

“One of the things our data tell us about our UNM students is that a lot of them come with lives fully formed that they are not putting aside to go to school,” he said.

Zane Maroney, a UNM alumnus, said he graduated in spring 2010 after attending UNM for six years. He said there were many reasons that it took longer than four years to graduate, including work, studying abroad for a year and changing his major.

“I had to budget my time, and a lot of that time I spent at work to pay for school,” Maroney said. “I couldn’t take large class loads.”
Goering said students have to average 16 hours every semester to graduate in four years. Only about 12 percent of UNM students graduate in four years, compared with about 20 percent of students at similar schools, he said.

NMSU’s graduation rate (44 percent) is about 2 percent higher than UNM’s. One percent of students who enrolled in 2003 graduated six years later, according to the Performance Effectiveness Report, a survey of New Mexico universities.

One way to increase graduation rates is by raising admission standards, Goering said, which the Board of Regents did in the spring. UNM is also starting a two-year plan this fall that Goering hopes will increase UNM’s six-year graduation rate to 50 percent, an increase that would make UNM a leader in graduation rates among peer institutions.

“There are a lot of people who pay a whole lot of money and don’t end up with a college degree,” he said. “Something about that isn’t right.”
The new plan is an extension of the “Graduation Project,” which was started more than 10 years ago at UNM. With the older Graduation Project, advisers would call and e-mail students who were close to graduation but hadn’t enrolled for classes at UNM for a year. Advisers would encourage students to enroll, help them pick classes and offer some financial aid.

UNM’s student-to-adviser ratio is 770 to 1, according to an Oct. 25 Daily Lobo report. That ratio is twice the national average and more than all of UNM’s peer institutions that had the data readily available.

This fall, Goering said, a small group of advisers will extend the Graduation Project by developing a plan for personally contacting all UNM seniors who are close to graduating and making sure it happens. Goering said UNM spent $360,000 on 10 new advisers last year and will probably make a similar investment this year.

“Individual focus will be the priority for the next two years,” he said.

More advisers will probably have to be hired, so the plan doesn’t overwhelm employed advisers who work now, he said.

Maroney said UNM advisement almost held him back from graduating on time by delaying his graduation date.

“It ended up being the adviser not having the proper information and not knowing what my requirements were,” he said. “I know that’s why a lot of people are really untrustworthy of the advisement.”