CSU Graduation Rate Rises but More Needed to Close Achievement Gap

In the face of state pressure to increase the percentage of students graduating in four years, California State University Chancellor Timothy White said the system far surpassed its six-year graduation goal last year, and reached a record level for four-year graduates.

In his “State of the CSU” speech to the Board of Trustees, White conceded that the university system has more work to do to close the “achievement gap” by improving graduation rates among minority students.

“The CSU has long acknowledged the existence of an achievement gap -- but we should not be, and are not satisfied that only half of our undergraduates from underserved communities graduate within six years,” White said. “That is simply not inclusive.”

Overall, however, White hailed the advancements by the CSU in its graduation rates. He said the CSU easily bested its goal for improving the rate of students who graduate in within six years.

“Additionally, the CSU fulfilled another goal last year by officially surpassing our target set for the Graduation Initiative 2015, where the goal for freshmen students was to increase six-year graduation rates from the baseline by eight percentage points,” White said. “We surpassed this goal, graduating record numbers of students as we achieved a nearly 11 percentage point improvement, for a total of 57 percent earning their degrees in six years or less, the highest in CSU’s history.”

White said the university system also set a record for its four-year graduation rate, which reached 19 percent for students who started in 2011.

Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing the CSU to bolster its four-year graduation rate, noting in his recent budget that the national average is 34 percent.

White’s initiative has set a goal of reaching a 24 percent four-year graduation rate by 2025, with a six-year rate of 60 percent by that same year.

In his speech, White noted that the graduation rates can be somewhat misleading, given the inability of many CSU students to take a full load of classes while balancing their home lives.

“This approach can lead to inappropriate conclusions as it leaves out the grit and success of over half our students today -- so many students with work, family and community obligations who cannot take 15 credits per semester,” he said. “We simply must, and will, be inclusive of these students going forward.”

White did not include in his speech discussion of the ongoing salary dispute with members of the California Faculty Association, who have been pushing for a 5 percent pay hike -- above the 2 percent being offered by the university. The union’s members have already voted to authorize a strike.

While not addressing the dispute, White said “we continue to invest in our faculty as a critical factor in achieving our shared goals.”

“Last year, total CSU faculty levels reached all-time highs, as we continue tenure-track searches,” he said. “In fact, the CSU hired 742 new tenure-track faculty in the 2014-15 academic year, the most of any year since before the recession.”

--City News Service, photo courtesy of Cal State Humboldt