While more American students are choosing to enroll in four-year colleges and universities than ever before, many of these students are not receiving their diplomas in a timely manner, according to a recent report by the Education Trust in Washington, D.C.
"Only approximately six out of 10 students who enroll in four-year colleges get a degree within six years," said Kevin Carey, Senior Political Analyst and author of the report. "This is just a big problem. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of students every year who start college and never finish."
And while Penn is far above the national average -- with a graduation rate of 92 percent within six years -- Carey said that other findings at the University are cause for concern. According to figures from the Deputy Provost's office, the University's graduation rate for white students is 93 percent, while the graduation rate for black students is 83 percent, and for Latinos is 90 percent.
This discrepancy mirrors Carey's findings at most of the schools he studied, in which he discovered an average gap between white and minority students of 10 percentage points or more.
Though University Deputy Provost Peter Conn wrote in an e-mail interview that Penn's graduation rates have "improved substantially for all students, minority and majority, over the past decade," he added that there is still "room for improvement."
The administration "will continue to work hard on this, since we are committed to the academic success of all our students," he wrote.
With a national graduation rate of 37 percent within four years, Carey said that institutions need to take action in any number of ways.
A combination of better alignment with K-12 curricula, better student aid policies and closer student tracking are all measures that could help students graduate in a more timely fashion, Carey said.
"Higher education institutions need to support students in their first year of college and work with them to stay on track," he said, adding that the highest dropout rates occur within a student's first year of college.
"We don't think that everyone should have a 98 percent graduation rate like Harvard does ... [but] this is really becoming a problem that we can't afford to ignore anymore."
