Finish in Four: Challenging College Norms to Improve Graduation Rates

By Jeff Marsee, Ph.D.

Higher education is in a state of crisis!
College budgets are becoming a challenge to balance. Expenses are continually increasing in an environment of declining enrollments, endowments, and government support. The stop-gap solution for decades was to increase tuition--this is no longer viable.
Students, parents, donors, and government agencies are scrutinizing the cost and return on investment of a college education. Colleges are under pressure for their underperformance of only graduating 40% of students on time while the national student debt is skyrocketing.
Addressing the issue of approximately 2 million students that start college annually and drop out provides colleges with an opportunity to turn the crisis around. Finish in Four introduces a model that provides an approach for developing strategic solutions in ten key areas to improve on-time graduation rates and reduce student debt. This will result in improved fiscal stability for America's struggling colleges.
A must-read for all college stakeholders and students selecting a college.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645366140

Jeff Marsee, Ph.D.

Jeff Marsee, Ph.D., is a higher-education consultant, presenter, retired college president, and former Fulbright Scholar to Russia. He earned Economics degrees from the University of Southern California (BA) and California State University at Long Beach (MA). His Ph.D. in Community College Leadership (Higher-Education Administration) was awarded by the University of Texas, at Austin. During Dr. Marsee's career, he worked in the non-profit and for-profit higher-education sectors as an instructor, chief financial officer, provost, and president. He also spent nearly a decade as a higher-education consultant, working with college stakeholders to improve on-time graduation rates. The culmination of his experiences and research has resulted in the writing of Finish in Four.

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About the Author

Jeff Marsee, Ph.D., is a higher-education consultant, presenter, retired college president, and former Fulbright Scholar to Russia. He earned Economics degrees from the University of Southern California (BA) and California State University at Long Beach (MA). His Ph.D. in Community College Leadership (Higher-Education Administration) was awarded by the University of Texas, at Austin. During Dr. Marsee’s career, he worked in the non-profit and for-profit higher-education sectors as an instructor, chief financial officer, provost, and president. He also spent nearly a decade as a higher-education consultant, working with college stakeholders to improve on-time graduation rates. The culmination of his experiences and research has resulted in the writing of Finish in Four.

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Jeff Marsee, Ph.D. (2020)

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Marsee, Ph.D., Jeff

Finish in Four

ISBN 9781641828031 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781641828048 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645366140 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939433

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First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

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Acknowledgment

Thank you, Leslie, my supportive wife, for spending as many hours patiently editing as I did writing Finish in Four.

I also want to thank my good friend and former colleague, Dr. Marjorie Carson, who convinced me that Finish in Four would be an important book for higher education and the students it serves.

Abstract

Higher education is in a state of crisis! College budgets are becoming a challenge to balance. Expenses are continually increasing in an environment of declining enrollments, endowments, and government support. The stopgap solution for decades was to increase tuition—this is no longer viable. Students, parents, donors, and government agencies are scrutinizing the cost and return on investment of a college education. Colleges are under pressure for their underperformance of only graduating 40% of students on time while the national student debt is skyrocketing.

Addressing the issue of approximately 2 million students that start college annually and drop out provides colleges with an opportunity to turn the crisis around. Finish in Four introduces a model that provides an approach for developing strategic solutions in ten key areas to improve on-time graduation rates and reduce student debt. This will result in improved fiscal stability for America’s struggling colleges.

Foreword

Every year, colleges and universities celebrate their students’ successes by orchestrating graduation commencement ceremonies. Families, friends, and loved ones attend these gatherings to acknowledge and celebrate the major achievement of earning a college degree or vocational certificate. A band plays the familiar Pomp and Circumstance as trustees, administrators, faculty, a commencement speaker, and then students, grandly dressed in historically significant caps and gowns, enter a large gathering area. The annual graduation ceremony recognizes the persistence and survival skills of the students that completed their quest for a college education.

But what about their absent peers, their former classmates who would not graduate with them? In 2018, 231 four-year colleges graduated less than 25% of their full-time students within eight years of enrollment. An additional 615 colleges reported rates below 50 percent. (Carey) Without being melodramatic, shouldn’t there be another event that mourns the loss of those who didn’t complete? It’s a telling commentary that billions of dollars are expended annually on facilities, personnel, and research—making America’s higher education system the largest in the world—yet colleges can only claim a less than 40% chance of successfully guiding their ‘clients’ to on-time graduation, and less than a 60% chance of reaching their goal within six years.

How many contractors would be able to survive with a reputation of only successfully completing 60% of the homes they were hired to build? Yet, colleges recruit, admit, and commit to educate enrolled students knowing that a successful outcome for many, is unlikely. Perhaps pausing to mourn the loss of so many promising students should give us a reason to ask why success is so elusive.

Finish in Four sheds light on this question and provides a data-driven model to help colleges improve on time graduation rates, lower their students’ debt and create a means to achieve improved fiscal stability.

Writer’s Notes

Educational Darwinism: Old School Thought?

When I began my higher education studies five decades ago, like many of the baby-boomer generation, I believed that going to college was a rite-of-passage—the next logical step after high school graduation in the linear process of achieving adulthood. College was perceived to be a non-threatening, neutral place to study, avoid the Vietnam draft, play and watch sports, and even prepare for a career.

A popular poster of the 1960s era read:

College! A comfortable, warm, safe place to nest between Mother and marriage.

When fellow students mysteriously dropped out of college before graduating, it was assumed that their failure to finish reflected a lack of preparedness or commitment. It was expected that good students would survive—they would flow through the pipeline and be rewarded with a degree. If a college student didn’t graduate, tough! An academically unprepared or uncommitted student wasn’t expected to finish.

It was easy to accept the concept that college was a form of educational Darwinism—a place where the academically fittest survived. It was perceived that a college degree had value, because not everyone had the ability to graduate. Students dropping out was an acceptable part of the weaning out or chaff-removal process. I believed that students had full responsibility for their success.

I was naïve… I had a lot to learn!

Are Colleges Equal?

My concept of natural selection in higher education took its first bump while I was working on my Ph.D. Among my readings was a mid-1980s’ Brookings Institution study. It reported that better funded colleges, as measured by expenditures per student, had higher graduation rates when compared to peer colleges, even after correcting for differences in students’ academic abilities and social backgrounds. The concept that differential funding could have an impact on student outcomes was a revelation that upset my previous perception of educational Darwinism. What if student success was not always a measurement of an individual’s dedication, perseverance, and academic preparation? What if colleges were not educational pipelines, providing sterile and otherwise neutral environments for students to learn and succeed? What if colleges were unequal in helping students graduate, some doing a better job of providing success-oriented support?

I was intrigued and decided to focus my dissertation research on the question of determining whether a student’s selected college could impact—negatively or positively—the likelihood of graduating. I used Texas community colleges as my test population. In addition to established state funding, districts had different levels of funding, based on institutionally determined tuition rates and varying local tax support. My research validated that there was a strong correlation between the amount of funding available per student and an institution’s aggregate graduation rates—richer was better.

However, throughout my career—from research, observation, and application—I have learned that it is not the relative funding that makes a college more effective in graduating its students. It is how well resources are allocated into high-impact student success-oriented areas and activities. Well-funded colleges have the advantage of being able to allocate resources into many different areas and programs with the hope that one or more of them will make a difference. Resource challenged institutes must be more strategic with their allocations. They don’t have the luxury of hoping.

It has been the search for measurable high-impact activities that can improve student success rates, often without requiring additional resources, that has been my continuing post-doctorate interest. I have subsequently learned that even relatively minor shifts in a college’s programs can have an exponential effect on institutional graduation rates.

An example of a relatively minor but effective retention practice was identified by Alexander Astin, an early student behavioral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He concluded that the most important factor that affected a student’s determination to graduate was whether a mentoring relationship had been established with at least one faculty member outside the classroom. Astin’s findings were validated by a more recent (2016) international study completed by the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER). The survey included 7,000 students from 19 universities in Japan and Australia. Like Astin’s results, the study concluded that, ’students are less likely to consider dropping out of university if they have strong relationships with teaching staff who are accessible and approachable.’ (Hare)

Another question related to faculty-student contact was whether colleges have inherent advantages in establishing these relationships based on differences in student population related to admission exclusivity. Apparently not, as findings from the 2014 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) showed, ‘that the average student experience can vary considerably from one institution to the next, even among colleges that are similar regarding enrollment and admissions selectivity. The results reveal that there are inconsistent relationships between admission selectivity and student-faculty interaction. Institutions with lower selectivity profiles often offer superior experiences between faculty and students.’

My metaphorical pipeline concept that colleges were basically the same when applied to students’ success was finished. My research concluded that colleges’ processes, procedures, and culture of support played a major role in their students’ success rates—even overriding funding differences. Colleges are not equally effective in graduating their students.

Does College Culture Impact Student Success?

My initial understanding that college practices have an impact on graduation rates was based on dissertation research, observation, and review of supporting academic publications. It wasn’t until I was engaged as an enrollment management consultant that I was able to expand and apply this knowledge. Working with colleges and universities across the nation, I gained hands-on insight that, when properly implemented, student retention practices make a substantial difference in an institution’s retention and graduation rates. It was also apparent that each college’s retention practices were imprints of the institutional culture, which defined how students were treated and supported in their quest for a degree.

Charles Darwin used empirical evidence to prove that islands in the Galapagos had unique environments, each affecting their island’s specific evolution of finches. My Galapagos experience occurred during an extended consulting engagement at several universities in North Carolina. I learned that colleges, like islands, have different cultures and environments that impact student success.

North Carolina was one of several southern states that had integrated its college and university system in response to the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1954 Supreme Court decision. The court declared state laws that established separate but equal public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which had allowed state-sponsored equal-but-separate college segregation.

Following desegregation, traditionally black and white publicly funded colleges continued to exist in North Carolina, but college admission policies and practices ceased to be discriminatory. While many minority students preferred to attend historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), formerly all-white colleges aggressively recruited minority students, and vice versa. As the integrated college system entered the new millennium, the social acceptance of the fully integrated student population at all of North Carolina’s public colleges had been achieved—although the colleges with African American student populations of 85% or greater were still designated as HBCUs.

Despite achieving social acceptance of integrated universities, North Carolina’s educational leaders were concerned that the freshman-to-sophomore persistence rates at the HBCUs were lower (by at least 10%) than the state’s formerly all-white colleges. The state’s HBCUs typically took students with lower standardized test scores and GPAs, resulting in open admissions colleges. The open access approach presented student retention challenges not common at the state’s predominantly non-minority institutions. However, Fayetteville State University (FSU), an HBCU, was an exception. Its freshmen-to-sophomore persistence rate was on par with the state’s former all-white colleges.

Another outlier was Western Carolina University (WCU), a formerly all-white college. Its average freshmen were enrolling with substantially stronger standardized admission test scores, upper quartile class rankings, and higher GPAs than the state’s HBCU freshmen. Yet, its persistence rates were on par with the HBCU’s.

I was engaged as a consultant to help determine what lessons could be learned, both positive and negative, from FSU and WCU that would help all the colleges in the state’s system to improve their freshmen persistence and graduation rates. My North Carolina experience reinforced the belief that every college has a unique impact on its students’ academic success in obtaining a degree and that colleges could improve persistence and graduation rates if their primary core beliefs and practices were supportive of student success.

Many of the best practices that will be shared in the following chapters are the result of observations and experiences learned while consulting for North Carolina and numerous other for-profit and non-profit colleges throughout America, as well as internationally oriented research and interviews.

Can College Culture Be Changed?

One of the primary lessons learned during my college administrative and consulting career was that, unlike the slow pace of evolution in the natural world, change within a college’s culture parameters can be accomplished quickly, if the organization is responding to a sense of urgency for change or with a strong vision for improvement. (Marsee) Creating a change environment requires successfully reducing the resistance of the culture keepers. One method to accomplish this is to provide quantifiable evidence that something is not working, is broken, and that improvement is beneficial to the overall success of the institution.

Another lesson learned was that change is more likely to occur when measurable results are linked to individual accountability. Colleges have a strong cultural emphasis towards participatory administration/management, shared governance, and consensus-oriented committee environments. An important part of the change management process introduced in Finish in Four is to go one step beyond making decisions by group consensus. Assigning individual accountability for implementation and assessing performance based on measurable goals keeps players invested in the process, instills pride of ownership as a motivator, and promotes milestone success recognition. Accountability also identifies individuals who are not able to achieve designated objectives, thus providing options to give additional support or to change players if necessary.

Why Finish in Four?

In the late 1990s, I combined the concepts of focusing on high-impact success areas with measurable outcomes and developed a college self-assessment checklist that I used in my consulting practice. By completing the checklist, stakeholders including trustees/directors, administrators, staff, faculty, and students could self-determine the relative effectiveness of their college’s student retention practices. This tool was used to analyze departments and functions that impacted student success; initiating discussions about how specific areas could be improved to help students graduate on time. It also provided a method to quantify progress on chosen initiatives.

For two decades, the evolving checklist helped colleges improve their student retention practices. While presenting the self-assessment checklist at the annual College Business Management Institute (CBMI), hosted by the University of Kentucky, Lexington, it became evident that the participants wanted more information than I could convey in a single presentation. It was their passion to learn about institutional factors that impacted student retention and the prevailing national focus on improving graduation rates that motivated me to expand upon a proven model for student success and write this book. The checklist, which has evolved into the College Assessment Tool, includes five levels of retention practices for each of the ten high-impact student success areas identified in Finish in Four. The reader will find the empirical-based assessment tool to be a quick method for analyzing a college’s student success culture and processes. Summary scores in Chapter 14 provide a general overview of a college’s culture of student success.

The title, Finish in Four: Challenging College Norms to Improve Graduation Rates, was selected because full-time students who are in college for more than four years are at greater risk of failing to graduate and accumulate more student debt. Since more than 81% of community college students initially indicate they intend to continue and graduate with a bachelor’s degree, the reference to graduating in four years seems applicable for most college-bound students. Finish in Four for part-time students refers to earning a bachelor’s degree with the minimum required units—i.e., 120 semester credits.

What used to be the norm, graduating in four years, has become the exception. In fact, colleges prefer to use three-year (community college) and six-year (four-year college) time periods when measuring graduation rates. Finish in Four brings into focus the need for our colleges to help their students achieve a degree without wasting time and resources. This book works under the premise that it should not take more than four years for a full-time student to graduate with a bachelor’s degree if everyone does their job effectively.

Who Will Benefit from Finish in Four ?

Finish in Four will introduce a model to help colleges retain more students and improve graduation rates. The information presented is relevant to all stakeholders who want to support a fiscally stable and student success driven environment.

Finish in Four is also useful for prospective college students and their support system including parents, spouses, and employers. Understanding the basics of what a college should be doing related to helping students succeed will be useful for asking the right questions to determine which college will be the best fit for insuring on-time graduation.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read and apply the concepts I have presented. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated by contacting me at finishinfour.com.

Jeff Marsee, Ph.D.

Finish in Four

Introduction

Navigating Through the Perfect Storm

Two college roommates were sitting on their beds in the small dorm room they had shared during their first year of college. The space was packed with boxes ready for shipment to their respective homes. It was the end of spring, and summer was promising to be a restful break after nine months of study and adjustment to the rigors of college academic life. They briefly recounted the memorable times and conversations they had shared—football games, hanging out with friends, late-night movies, favorite professors, study sessions, and holiday visits to each other’s homes to meet family and friends. After their first year in college, both were preparing for the next step in their lives. Liam, going forward in his college studies, was ready to start his sophomore year in fall. John, sadly, was returning home with no plans. His freshman year was academically unsuccessful. It was a hard, ‘Good-bye,’ filled with hope for Liam, a questionable future for John. Based on high school grades and college entrance scores, both students had appeared to be academically prepared. John just couldn’t make it work. Too many distractions in his first year away from home and no one to turn to when he realized he was in trouble. ‘If only I had known how to ask for help. By the time I realized that everything was out of control, it was too late. I guess I don’t belong here.’

Across campus, in the girl’s dorms, four roommates were also reminiscing about their experiences. Like John, Jane would not be advancing to her sophomore year. Her dad lost his job, so college was no longer financially possible—at least not here. While not knowing it at the time, only Ashley and Liam would graduate in four years. Sarah would stop out and in; finally graduating after six years. June would drop out of college before completing her junior year—never graduating.

As the students were beginning their preparations for summer break, the college president was in the administrative wing, sitting at the head of a conference table and facing a dejected group of administrators. The update from the admissions dean was alarming; with all the competition and the decline in high school graduates, enrollments were down substantially. The report from the business manager was even worse. Tuition revenue had fallen below the breakeven point for the third straight year. Freshmen students were dropping out earlier than projected—many before their first term was completed. In addition, following a recent tuition increase, many students were transferring to their local community colleges or changing to part-time status—working full-time to offset their educational costs. Debt service, an older and more expensive tenured faculty, fixed operational costs, diminishing fund balances (reserves), and with the unrestricted foundation funds already expended, equilibrium wasn’t going to be easy to find. ‘Maybe,’ thought the president, ‘it is time to retire.’

While the above scenario is fictional, it represents what is happening at colleges across America. At the more than 3,500+ regionally accredited colleges, one-third of the freshmen class haven’t been returning as sophomores since 2013. (U.S. News & World Report, 2015 College Edition) Of the students that do graduate, only 19% of four-year non-flagship public college students and 36% of flagship university students completed their studies in four years. Less than 55% of full-time freshmen starting in 2010, including transfers from two-year and four-year colleges, earned a 4-year degree in 6 years. (National Student Clearinghouse)

At community colleges, less than 5% of full-time students graduate in two-years, 22% in three years, and 28% in four years. Of the 29% of bachelor’s degree-seeking community college students who transferred to four-year colleges (81% initially intended to transfer), only 42% completed a bachelor’s degree within six years. In other words, only 12% of the students who entered community college in 2011 earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. (National Center for Educational Statistics)

Many students are frustrated by not only failing to achieve their degree on time, if at all, but also with the cost of college and student debt that is spiraling out of control. Emotionally and intellectually scarred, the more than 900,000+ full-time freshmen who annually drop out of college must survive the frustration and financial loss of not achieving a college degree. What should be the realization of a wonderful academic dream, going to college, too frequently becomes a student’s nightmare.

From the colleges’ perspective—the traditional high school feeder base is softening because a declining number of graduates are entering a highly competitive college market, making the former practice of easily back-filling empty seats impractical. There are also too many under-prepared students dropping out, funding from government and donors is declining, fiscal stability is becoming harder to maintain as costs are at best cemented and at worst continuing to increase, the return on investment of a college education is being scrutinized, student debt is becoming a national issue, and increasing tuition to balance the budget is no longer a viable option.

Most colleges would easily compensate if one or two of these issues were presented to them. However, many colleges are now forced to address all of these ‘perfect storm’ conditions that are impacting their institutional fiscal stability. The option for survival will only be possible by changing strategies that formerly promoted student access to that of keeping students and promoting student success as defined by on-time graduation.

An Overview of the Stormy Conditions Student Success

The U.S. higher education system is one of the strongest and most highly regarded in the world, but our numbers are declining as compared to the international collegiate competition. For instance:

The U.S. college graduation rate ranks 19th out of 28 countries studied by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Since 1995, when the U.S. was first among member nations with a 33% graduation rate, the average international college completion rate has grown from 20% to 38%, as more countries focus on boosting the number of college graduates. During the same period, the U.S. has improved its graduation rate only 6% (to 39%)—slightly higher than the average rate but not maintaining its number one rating. (Schleicher)

In 2012, 39% of full-time American bachelor’s degree students were expected to graduate from college within five-years, compared with the expected four-year graduation rates of 60% in Iceland, 57% in New Zealand, and 53% in Poland. (Four-Year Myth)

The full-time community college associate arts students take an average of 3.9 years to graduate. (Four-Year Myth)

Nationwide, only 50 of more than 580 public four-year institutions graduate a majority of their full-time students on time. (Lewin)

OECD reported that the U.S. has fallen from 1st to 15th (below average) in world rankings in upward social and economic mobility in the last decade, with only 14% of Americans aged 25-34 achieving more education than their parents. This compared to Australia, one of the upward mobility leaders among developed countries (ranked 5th) where the focus has been on access combined with improving graduation rates, resulting in a 25% increase in first-generation enrollments and with 40% of Australians aged 25-34 being more educated than their parents. (Weston)

In an increasingly competitive world of college educated leaders and professionals, maintaining the status quo course of the past is no longer an acceptable survival strategy for America’s higher educational institutions.

College Readiness Gap

There is growing concern that