Dropouts Tell No Tales

By Jamaal Abdul-alim

“But UWM’s graduation rates are not only low in absolute terms, they’re low even compared to other nonselective, access institutions. Bowling Green State University in Ohio, for instance, is almost as open access as UWM (admissions rate: 80.1 percent). But it has a six-year graduation rate of 50.1 percent for black students, compared to 19 percent at UWM. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 31.2 percent of black students graduate within six years from other four-year institutions with similar admissions rates—a dismal showing that’s still 12 percentage points higher than it is at UWM. (The national average six-year graduate rate for all students at similar access institutions is 45.4 percent.) UWM was cited in a 2010 Education Trust study for being sixth in the nation (at 28.2 percent) among public colleges and universities with the largest white-black graduation rate gaps.”

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