Every year as part of the college’s Institutional Effectiveness (IE) process, we examine data related to student success such as retention, persistence, graduation, employment, and transfer rates for inclusion in the annual IE Report as Core Indicators, which form the basis of an institutional report card that documents continuous improvement toward the achievement of the college’s mission and goals. (To access the Institutional Effectiveness Report please go to: http://www.hvcc.edu/assessment/index.html.)
So, how did we do in these vital areas over the academic year 2016-17? Let’s take a look at retention rates and graduation rates.
Core Indicator 2.3 Retention looks at the percentage of first-time, full-time students entering Hudson Valley in the fall semester who return the following fall and compares it with the previous year’s retention rate and that of our SUNY peer community colleges. As you can see in the chart below, for students entering fall 2016, 58.8% of them returned in fall 2017, up from 56.5% the preceding fall. Due to the increase we met our benchmark of greater than or equal to the prior year.
Fall to Fall Retention Rates for HVCC and SUNY Peer Community Colleges
However, we did not reach our second benchmark, which was meeting or exceeding the average retention rate of our six SUNY peer community colleges, which was 61.5%, also depicted in the chart. Additionally, our peer community colleges, with the exception of Erie and Onondaga, had higher retention rates than ours.
To get a fuller picture of our retention rates, we also looked at retention by self-reported ethnicity/race categories of our students. This is what we found:
Retention Rates by Ethnicity/Race* for HVCC and SUNY Peer Community Colleges
As you can see, there are substantial disparities between groups. For example, while 63.8% of Hudson Valley’s White students entering fall 2016 came back in fall 2017, only 47.7% of Hispanic/Latino students returned, 37.2% of Black or African American students returned, and only 41.0% of students who identified as ‘Two or more race’ returned the following fall. Only Asian students returned at a higher rate than White students, with 70.8% returning in fall 2017. In the right hand column, we see the average percentage rates of each group for our peer SUNY community colleges (same colleges as above), all of which were higher than those of HVCC. Needless to say we did not meet our benchmark for this comparison.
Well then, how about graduation? What is our graduation rate?
Core Indicator 1.1 Graduation Rate in the IE Report looks at the graduation rate of Hudson Valley students and compares it, as with the retention rate, with the graduation rates of our peer SUNY community colleges. For this purpose, we use the SUNY Degree Completion Rate, which is the percentage of first-time, full-time students who graduate within three years of program entry. As you can see, both our two-year rate and three-year rate increased from the prior term, and HVCC students graduated at a higher percentage in both categories than those students at our SUNY peer institutions, thereby meeting our benchmarks.
Fall to Fall Retention Rates for HVCC and SUNY Peer Community Colleges
Also as with retention, we look at graduation rates by ethnic/race category (Core Indicator 3.3 Graduation Rates by Ethnicity), and again, compare them to the average rates for our peer SUNY community colleges. As the chart below reveals, there are again disparities between categories, with a higher percentage of White students graduating within three years for both HVCC (32.2%) and our SUNY peer institutions (26.8%), with the exception of HVCC’s Asian students, who graduated at a rate of 34.5%. HVCC outperformed our peer institutions for entering term fall 2014 in several categories: White (32.2% compared to 26.8%), Asian (34.5% compared to 24.9%), and “More than 2 races” (23.9% compared to 20.6%). For HVCC and our peers, there were notable differences between White students, Black or African American students, and Hispanic/Latino students, with a much lower graduation rate for the latter two groups compared to White students, as seen below, with the largest discrepancy between White students and Black or African American students (32.2% and 11.8%, respectively). This trend is seen in prior entering terms as well.
Graduation Rates by Ethnicity/Race for HVCC and SUNY Peer Community Colleges*
So what does all this mean?
We know that there are many factors that go into both retention rates and graduation rates. Our students, as one can presume for our SUNY peer institution students as well, come to college with a wide range of goals. Some intend to take a few courses and leave, some intend to transfer before graduating, and some intend to graduate before transferring or entering the workplace. If they meet these goals, then they have succeeded. However, of the students who don’t return and/or don’t graduate, many have not met their goals, whatever these goals may be. Many struggle academically, many work in addition to attending college, take care of family members, and/or struggle with health issues and/or financial issues. It is these students that we need to continue to reach out to in order to help them succeed and attain their goals.
“The success of an institution and the success of its students are inseparable.” Randi Levitz and Lee Noel (1998)
Published: Thu, 08 Mar 2018 13:15:19 +0000 by m.geehan