Compared to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, the University of Houston’s four- and six-year graduation rates are not acceptable to UH President and Chancellor Renu Khator.
The four- year and six-year graduation rates among UH students have risen to 16.5 percent and 45.7 percent, respectively, placing UH below the six-year or less average of 57.4 percent for public Texas universities. UT has a four-year graduation rate of 50.7 percent and a six-year rate of 82.9 percent, while A&M graduates 53 percent in four years and 83.6 percent in six years.
“Our graduation rate is not where it needs to be,” Khator said.
“When I meet successful alumni, I always tell them how proud I am of them. But for every successful alumnus, there’s another student who is left behind.”
Student Government Association President Cedric Bandoh shares with Khator’s disappointment.
“We have an incredibly talented and diverse student body, with many of our students at the top of their high school class and the first person in their family to go to college,” Bandoh said. “We frankly must do better.”
Its location and the type of students the University attracts may be the cause of such a low rate — not necessarily student intelligence.
“Enrollment at an urban public university such as the University of Houston includes a significant number of older beginning students, who typically take longer to graduate than traditional-age beginners,” said Executive Director of Media Relations Richard Bonnin.
“(The graduation rate) is not surprising, as many of these students have the additional responsibilities of raising a family and are taking courses while working to pay for college or while fulfilling active military duty requirements.”
This theory is supported by Bandoh.
“Most classes are scheduled between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., which doesn’t allow us to offer as many course sections as possible,” Bandoh said. “It also causes a parking headache because thousands of us are coming and going simultaneously.”
Not all seem quick to blame the nature of the University or the faculty.
“We’re at an amazing school that rivals schools like UT, A&M and Rice, and we should be proud of it and be ready to work hard to make our school proud of us. The only people to blame for low graduation rates are the students, and they’re the ones that need to step up and fix it,” said piano senior Bethany Monjaras.
The solution may be what are called high-impact practices, which involve students individually, directly and communally. These practices mentioned in the research from the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Association of American Colleges and Universities were cited recently by Khator as a factor that improves grades, engagement and student retention.
“A recent study by UH’s Office of Institutional Research concluded that UH trailed its national peers in delivering high-impact practices such as learning communities. Only 13 percent of UH’s first-year students are engaged in learning communities compared to 22 percent at public non-residential institutions and 18 percent of urban institutions,” Bonnin said.
As UH’s high-impact practice rate is also low, Khator aims to improve it as a way to increase four- and six-year graduation rates.
“We must engage students in these practices early,” Khator said. “We don’t want to lose momentum. I compliment our faculty because I recognize its commitment to student success. These practices are just a piece of the puzzle and can help us improve our classrooms and continue to grow as an institution.”
Bandoh hopes to attack this issue by encouraging the students to take on a larger course load and get more involved.
“I always highly encourage students, if possible (starting from freshman year), to take 15 credit hours a semester to ensure graduation in four years. I also highly encourage taking summer school (and taking core classes at local community colleges and transferring them in to save money). If available and possible, high school students should get as many of the core courses completed as they can during high school,” Bandoh said.
“All of these academic components must also be accompanied by improvements in campus and student life. I believe our new University Center and new residence halls will help as we have more students on campus permanently.”
Additional reporting done by Alexandra Doyle.
This is the biggest issue facing our University. I am currently a graduate student who also recently completed an undergraduate degree at the Bauer College. Nobody is to blame for the low graduation rates except the students at UH. There are far too many students treating this university as a glorified community college. As a non-traditional student and military veteran I see no reason for the graduation rates to be this low other than students not buckling down and taking college seriously. I am tired of the misplaced attitude that this is some sort of remedial institution where it is ok to meander aimlessly through the system for years at a time. The administration needs to halt these students at the door and redirect them to the UH satellite campuses. The system is in place for UH to be a top tier university. The quality control on the student population is where the last remaining big issues are at.
The larger issue is that UH simply can’t afford to turn anyone away. The University is currently undergoing through an unprecedented amount of construction and renovations, and students are footing the bill for the majority of it. A smaller, more successful student body means that we can’t foot the bill. It’s also why tuition has skyrocketed. If you check USNWR’s rankings, it’s actually cheaper to attend TAMU (an actual Tier One University) than UH. There’s no one telling lower-performing students to stop at the door, because we need those students (or more accurately, those students’ tuition checks).
That’s why since Khator instituted her Tier One campaign, application requirements have barely moved. If she wanted to get serious about Tier One, she’d push the Board to up the guaranteed acceptance point to the top 10% of the high school graduating class, to more align with the universities she seeks to have us compete with. Automatically taking the top 15% (or top 20% with a minimal SAT/ACT score) is simply putting trash in and expecting to get something other than trash out.
With very limited financial aid, some of us cannot afford to take many classes at once because the high cost of tuition. This limits us to only a few classes a semester, which lowers the graduation rates.
Maybe if UH wants more people to graduate, they should give more financial aid or lower class fees.
Alright, but most UH students are commuters who are working and paying for their own classes… not exactly people who go out of town and pay for everything with loans and their parents’ money. Of course our four-year graduation rate is low compared to the UTs and the A&Ms of the college world–working part- or full-time and taking fifteen to eighteen hours of classes isn’t easy. I’m pretty sure that we have a completely different student body.
The point is the “commuter mentality” needs to go away. The university needs to create opportunities for “commuter students” at its satellite campuses. To really become a top tier Unversity, you have to start attracting “traditional students” who would otherwise attend the other flagship institutions. You accomplish this by doing what Taylor stated. STOP ACCEPTING SUB PAR STUDENTS. Garbage in Garbage Out. Selectivity sparks interest from higher achieving students, which nutrolls into more accomplished alumni who endow more heavily. It nutrolls into more grant money for research etc. etc. I feel like the University has the numbers at 40K students. I would like to see the Admission standards rise after this year.
this is insane. The real issue why I am graduating (hopefully) after 4 years is because the advising services. As a freshman you don’t have a clue what to take and are forced to take 12 hours of basics usually to “not fail” however if I was told to start on my sciences and the core classes I could handle I would be much further along. As you increase in classification, you learn to figure it out on your own because the advisers are to “busy” or “out of office” to handle your questions and problems.
UH tuition is much lower than it needs to be to sustain the kind of campus and offerings that a Tier-One needs to have. I agree completely with the previous poster that the advising staff is minimally trained and has far too many advisees. That said, it is very difficult for working class, first generation students at a large public school like UH to learn how to navigate through the bureaucracy of enrollment and requirements–not to mention time management, writing skills, and productivity. Taking Core courses at a community college is NOT the answer: those students are profoundly unprepared to write and think critically. I am unable to teach at a high level because I am constantly re-training and encouraging students who lack these basic skill sets.
That’s somewhat expected when UH has way more looser admission requirements than other “Tier One” universities. You’ll likely get more less qualified people that way.
It also doesn’t help that with tuition and fees, it still costs quite a lot to go to UH. Why do I pay as much for an online or hybrid course, than I would for a full lecture course? I am less likely to be using and degrading UH property and infrastructure so I should expect to be paying less. I’ve even had an online course where the professor just uploaded a bunch of PowerPoints, administered 3 exams online and barely communicated. I paid full amount for that?
Also the fees can get pretty out of hand. It’s not public knowledge beforehand what each college charges for its own fees as far as I can tell. Why should I pay $25 for printing paper I may never use completely at UH computer labs? Ditto with the UH rec.
So yes, part of it is the problem of having students not ready for college, but I think a good part is the cost-prohibitive structure that UH has.
This is where UH-Downtown would come in to take on working students and students not capable of completing coursework at UH. However, my alma mater doesn’t have enough space to handle our own students to begin with. The only cost effective solution would be to send them to UH-Clear Lake since they have more than enough space and is intended to compete with SFASU, SHSU and Lamar.
First of all, I don’t know what Bethany Monjaras is smoking but the fact of the matter is that UH does NOT even come close to matching schools like TAMU and UT Austin in terms of academics and extracurricular activities (e.g. athletics).
The low graduation rates can be attributed to several reason in my opinion:
1.) Whether you agree or not, UH has, is, and will most likely always be a commuter school. This school was founded on the basis that it would serve as an institution of higher learning for the children of Houston’s working-class families.
Majority of the students live very far away such as Kingwood, Sugar Land, and Katy and we often have to work two part-time jobs or full-time jobs to make ends meet, therefore, it takes us much longer to graduate than traditional college students.
2.) UH is often used as a springboard by certain students who don’t want to attend a community college but, want to move on to other Tier One schools such as TAMU and UT Austin.
Are those students factored into the percentage? Having a large number of students transfer would obviously affect our graduation rates as those students technically don’t graduate from UH.
3.) Academics at UH is on the decline. As a Bauer student, I am disgusted by having to take classes which are completely useless and waste of my money and time when I could be taking more courses related to my major.
Academic advisers (besides Joanna Arnold who is simply amazing) are often clueless on coursework, degree plans, and what classes count for what track or concentration. Having these types of advisers complicates things for students when the person responsible for guiding you academically doesn’t even know what he or she is doing.
I could list many more problems that I see but, it would run several pages and I don’t have the time. I will conclude by saying that UH has a LONG way to go before it reaches Tier One status a la UT Austin and TAMU.
If 84% dont meet 4 year graduation requirements and 16% then we must study this 16% student population to influence the other population. As a former UHD student who went to UH, and HCC I see no difference between UHD/UH same professors just a high price tag on MAIN CAMPUS. What school district did the student graduate from was it college ready?
If the admitting students are coming from HCC or from HISD, its almost a foregone conclusion they are unprepared for real college. I went to HCC and earned A + Bs and was usually the most engaged and interested in my classes, but when I got to UH, and really had to double-down — that’s how big the learning gap was. It’s taken me a few semesters to get my GPA back up, but that took a lot of work, and a complete overhaul of my expectations. I thought I was on safe ground with good grades from HCC. I was sooo wrong. If you go to HCC to save money, you can also expect to lower your study standards which WILL bite you later in the a__.. They really aren’t there to help you; they’re there to delude you into a false sense of success and get you out the door.
In defense of some wonderful academic advisors I have had at UH – Students need to understand that advisors are specialists in the major(s) they actually represent, not all majors at UH. Frustration often stems from students either being indecisive about the degree they want to pursue or not being admitted or classified as the major they are actually pursuing. They are seeking degree advice from the wrong people. Advisors too often have more students assigned to them than can be managed well, and we should push for change in that arena. Also, if one knows that a community college is known for being too easy, one should understand that what they experience at that campus will not be what they experience at a rigorous institution of higher learning, such as UH. Choose to start elsewhere, if not starting at UH. The academics and research at UH rival the best institutions. Athletics is improving every year, but the main issue with the perception of our Athletics program is the student body attitude and attendance. Would you buy a house, let it fall apart, and blame your neighbors for the plummeting value of your investment? Be proud of the investment you are making by attending UH. Do what you can to increase the value of that degree by positively promoting all things UH. The value of your degree and the weight it carries in the community will improve and you will reap the rewards.
If you have issues with the service and support at UH – do something about it! Talk to the right people. Get involved in SGA. Start a student group that works to make positive changes on campus and in the community. You do not need to sit idly by and be a helpless victim of some perceived atrocity. This experience will be what you make of it and will be a marker for your successes post-graduation.
In defense of some wonderful academic advisors I have had at UH –
Students need to understand that advisors are specialists in the
major(s) they actually represent, not all majors at UH. Frustration
often stems from students either being indecisive about the degree they
want to pursue or not being admitted or classified as the major they are
actually pursuing. They are seeking degree advice from the wrong
people. Advisors too often have more students assigned to them than can
be managed well, and we should push for change in that arena. Also, if
one knows that a community college is known for being too easy, one
should understand that what they experience at that campus will not be
what they experience at a rigorous institution of higher learning, such
as UH. Choose to start at an institution also known for mentoring great students, if not starting at UH. The academics
and research at UH rival the best institutions. Athletics is improving
every year, but the main issue with the perception of our Athletics
program is the student body attitude and attendance. Would you buy a
house, let it fall apart, and blame your neighbors for the plummeting
value of your investment? Be proud of the investment you are making by
attending UH. Do what you can to increase the value of that degree by
positively promoting all things UH. The value of your degree and the
weight it carries in the community will improve and you will reap the
rewards.
If you have issues with the service and support at UH – do
something about it! Talk to the right people. Get involved in SGA. Start
a student group that works to make positive changes on campus and in
the community. You do not need to sit idly by and be a helpless victim
of some perceived atrocity. This experience will be what you make of it
and will be a marker for your successes post-graduation.