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Introduction and Context

Graduation and Success Rates First-Time Full-Time Freshman Cohorts Fall 06 to Fall 11 Also: Pell Grant Cohorts 2006 and 2007 D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Recipients 2000-2013 Trinity Washington University. Introduction and Context.

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Introduction and Context

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  1. Graduation and Success RatesFirst-Time Full-Time Freshman Cohorts Fall 06 to Fall 11Also: Pell Grant Cohorts 2006 and 2007D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Recipients 2000-2013Trinity Washington University

  2. Introduction and Context Arising from an historic mission commitment to ensure access to higher education for women who once were excluded, rooted in the social justice commitments of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who founded Trinity College in 1897, Trinity Washington University today is deeply committed to ensuring broad access to educational opportunities for historically marginalized populations, particularly women and low income students from the District of Columbia and the Washington region. Trinity’s student body profile includes: • 75% African American students • 15% Hispanic students • 95% women • 50% District of Columbia residents • 30% Prince Georges County and Montgomery County residents • 75% of undergraduates are Pell Grantees • 99% of full-time undergraduates receive Trinity grants • 100% of all students receive some form of financial aid

  3. Different Pathways to Graduation and Success Trinity works each day to ensure student success and graduation. The university’s experience with students who have many “non-traditional” characteristics --- older students, part-time students, single parents, self-supporting, working full-time while in school, heads of households and caretakers for siblings and elder family members, students who sometimes are homeless or financially marginalized --- reveals that such students make their way through college along pathways and with timetables that are remarkably different from the stereotypical 18-22 year old “traditional” college student (a distinct minority of all college students today). Federal policy continues to use very traditional measurements to assess student success, e.g., the IPEDS “graduation rate” that only measures “seat time” in one school, an outmoded traditional notion of retention and completion for cohorts of full-time first-time freshmen. The government-mandated data treats transfer students as drop-outs even if they complete degrees at another university, and also treats as drop-outs students who actually complete degrees at their first university beyond the traditional 4-6 year timeframe. Trinity believes that a more complete measurement of continuing enrollment and degree attainment across multiple institutions, and all along the student’s lifespan, is a more realistic measure of academic success. Stopped-out students are not drop-outs, and particularly for women who often must stop out for family concerns, recognizing and accounting for the importance of later return and completion patterns is a significant issue for those students, their colleges and also the workforce. Accordingly, in this report, Trinity provides both the federally required data along with the more complete picture of student progress toward degrees across multiple institutions as provided by using the data available in the National Student Clearinghouse. Finally, Trinity will augment this data periodically to include students who transfer into Trinity, adult and professional students, and graduate students.

  4. Data Sources • IPEDS: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the federal database that establishes the baseline data reported by all institutions • National Student Clearinghouse: private voluntary system through which student progress across multiple institutions is tracked through graduation

  5. METHODOLOGY • Using the National Student Clearinghouse, Trinity has identified the progress of every student in each first-time full-time freshman cohort starting in 2006 and every fall semester through 2011. The clearinghouse data, displayed on the next table, shows the percentage of students in each cohort who are: • Still enrolled at Trinity • Still enrolled at another higher ed institution • Have earned a bachelor’s at Trinity (which is the equivalent of the IPEDS graduation rate) • Have earned a certificate at another institution • Have earned a bachelor’s degree at another institution • Have earned an associate’s degree at another institution • The “success rate” is the total proportion of all of the above --- students who are still enrolled at Trinity or at another institution, or those who have graduated from Trinity or elsewhere. • Below the gray line on the next page, Trinity has also assessed the relative weight of the attrition factors that had the greatest impact on students who are not enrolled and did not complete degrees. The identifiable attrition factors include: • Financial Holds • Poor Academic Performance (beyond academic probation) • Academic Probation • Good Academic Performance (which may mean a student transferred for a programmatic reason) • Note that, most often, attrition is due to multiple factors with finance and academic performance interacting, but also factors such as health and family issues or other personal issues that are difficult to assess in a standardized way like finance or grade point averages.

  6. On the columns above, the dark purple is the completion rate at Trinity, the light purple is still enrolled at Trinity, the blues are completed or still enrolled at other institutions, and the red line and number is the “success rate.” The cohorts that began in 2006-2007-2008 have largely finished degrees by now. The cohorts for 2009-2010-2011 are mostly still in school. Above the line, the columns show attrition because of money (green) or academic reasons.

  7. Interpretation of the Data • As indicated on the graph on the previous page, Trinity’s total “success rate” (the red line across the columns) indicating students who have graduated or are still enrolled at Trinity is 57%-60%-68% for the cohorts that started in 2006-2007-2008 respectively, the cohorts that would be most likely to be at or near completion by 2013. Those rates are significantly higher than the IPEDS completion rate alone (the lowest purple part of the columns for those years) which indicates only those students who finished degrees at Trinity. • The yellow line and markers across 2006 and 2007 at 30% and 33% respectively are the Pell Grantee 6-year completion rates for those cohorts, almost the same as all students in the cohorts since Trinity’s Pell Grant proportion is very high at 75% of the cohorts. • As the names listed on the bottom of the chart on the previous page reveals, most of the students who transfer out of Trinity go to public universities, most often for financial reasons, sometimes because the major public universities have a broader menu of major programs. Trinity plays a large role in helping to prepare students for long-term success in whatever institution eventually awards the degree. • Students who are not currently enrolled at Trinity or elsewhere consistently demonstrate the top attrition factors of financial and academic stress. These factors are consistent across many universities that enroll large numbers of low income students, who are also most likely to have academic preparatory deficiencies as a result of under-performing public schools. Some of these students will eventually complete degrees after stopping out for a period of time.

  8. D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Recipients2000-2013

  9. CIRP DATA: FINANCIAL PROFILE Trinity’s entering first year students face considerable financial challenges. Data collected from the freshmen through the annual CIRP (Cooperative Institutional Research Program) reveals consistently that more than half the class have family incomes under $30,000. The following chart using the 2012 CIRP data is illustrative. The comparison group reflects women students at all four-year Catholic colleges.

  10. More than half of Trinity freshmen have family incomes of less than $25,000, while in the cohort group half have family incomes of less than $90,000. 75% of Trinity frosh have family incomes of less than $50,000, while 75% of the cohort group have family incomes of les than $150,000. 73% 51% 76% 58%

  11. Select Cohort Study of Proportionate Enrollment of White, Black Hispanic Students in Fall 2012, Rate of Pell Grant Participation of Freshmen, Cohort Graduation Rate for Fall 2006 Cohort as reported in the 2013 IPEDS Data Benchmarking Reports Trinity Washington University Prepared by President Pat McGuire January 25, 2014

  12. Institutions Selected for This Cohort This is a blended cohort of Trinity’s standard cohort of historic women’s colleges in urban centers, some Catholic, augmented with the addition of other private colleges with high Pell Grant and Black/Hispanic proportions, and also including a select group of HBCU institutions both public and private to see the interplay of Pell, Race and Completion Data. The data is all extracted from each institution’s 2013 IPEDS Data benchmarking reports available on the NCES website.

  13. Trinity’s Place in the Data Note that as the spreadsheet gets sorted in different ways (not always shown on the following slides) it turns out that Trinity is: • 7th among all 38 institutions in the Pell Grant proportion of the freshman class (75%) • 9th from the bottom on the completion rate for Fall 2006 cohort (30%) • 14th largest Black student population (in fact, a larger proportion of Black students than UDC) • 12th largest Hispanic student population • 10th largest combined Black & Hispanic population

  14. What the Data Demonstrates The data on the following slides depict graphically the relationship between the proportion of Pell Grantees in a freshman class and the graduation rates. Note that because the data all comes from the 2013 IPEDS report, the Pell Grant cohort (Fall 2011) is different from the actual graduation cohort (Fall 2006) but a review of the data for all institutions on the list over time shows fairly consistent numbers with only slight variations over time. This data is consistent with the report of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid (the report “Measure Twice”) that documents the fact that graduation rates are most clearly affected by the proportion of Pell Grant recipients in a student population as well as the size of the institutional endowment and test scores. The latter two points are not revealed in this particular study but anecdotally it’s fair to say that the institutions on this report with the largest Pell Grantee population also have very small endowments. Many do not use test scores so that correlation is unclear.

  15. Chart One: Sorted by Graduation Rates On the next slide, the yellow line shows the graduation rates for the Fall 2006 cohort from highest to lowest. As the rate declines, the percentage of Pell recipients in the first year class (red line) increases. Also note the change in the racial composition of the student body as the Pell grant proportion increases and graduation rate declines.

  16. Chart Two: Sorted by Pell Recipients Chart Two on the next page shows the descending slope of Pell Grantees compared to grad rates and student body racial composition. Interesting to note that some institutions with relatively modest Pell Grant proportions still have low grad rates.

  17. The Impact of Race and Social Class “Low income students” is the new euphemism to talk about race and social class in higher education today. In fact, race matters very much because of the disproportionate impact of poverty on Black and Hispanic students. Failing to understand the data by race leaves out a major component of the story of college persistence and completion today. The next three slides (Charts Three, Four and Five) show the performance of the cohort when sorted first by race – Chart three by Black Student proportion, Chart four by White Student proportion, Chart five by Hispanic Student proportion.

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