Graduation Rates

My first Commencement at William Paterson University, actually my first five of 11 Commencements in 2020, had me leading the show. It was peak COVID, and President Helldobler was unexpectedly quarantined in Chicago when the rules changed for crossing state lines into New Jersey. I had never done the provost role at Commencement, let alone the presidential part. But here I was, sweating in the heat of August, and from nervousness, presiding over the most important ceremony in higher education and studying the faces of socially distant students spread out on Wightman Field nearly the full length of the gridiron. That spring semester was one none of us will forget—the massive pivot to fully online teaching in a matter of weeks and all the associated anxiety and worry about its impact on learning. But in the faces of those students, who were also boiling underneath their gowns, I saw their resilience on full display.

As a scholar of higher education, I have studied extensively the roots of what we do and why we do it. One of those roots at the start of the 20^th century was a decision by U.S. academics to conform to what was the rage at the time, “industrial efficiency,” and formalize a bachelor’s degree as 120 credits, and to also receive a pension from Andrew Carnegie if they did it. That in turn led to a decision to formalize teaching into fall and spring semesters (forget summer as that was reserved for agricultural work), and to decide that 15 credits should be the standard semester course load, and voila, college should take four years to complete. That more or less worked fine until post-World War II when 2.2 million veterans ultimately took advantage of the GI Bill and the federal government felt they needed to see what they were getting for their investment. Hence, the four-year graduation rate was born. As higher education massified, by the 1980s and 1990s, the six-year benchmark emerged to better reflect that student pathways were increasingly diverse, namely, starting and stopping, going part-time at moments and returning full-time at others, and working while in school.

Whereas I have always been troubled by equating quality to a graduation rate, it is powerfully self-evident that to ignore it is foolhardy. Why? Three reasons. First, the biggest factor that leads a student to drop out is time. The longer something takes, the more likely real life will intervene. Second, the Consumer Price Index since 1990 has increased about 140 percent, and average college tuition and fees by 436 percent, more than 3 times faster. Healthcare, childcare, and prescription drugs, often the pariahs for unsustainable cost increase, don’t come close to higher education. Third, whereas we can lament not receiving sufficient state funding over time, or the erosion of higher education as a public good and worthy of investment, the bottom line is we need to think about both quality and efficiency.

So, what do we know from our data? First, in academic year 2024-25, we graduated 35.4 percent of the students who started here as first-time freshmen four years ago (fall 2021), our highest level since academic year 2019-20, and with the highest level for which data is posted in the Factbook (going back to 1986) being 36.8 percent in 2018. Interestingly, prior to 2010, four-year graduation rates were no higher than about 20 percent, with a low of 12.9 percent in 2002. With respect to the students who started here six years ago as first-time freshmen (fall 2019), we graduated 44.2 percent of them. That rate is the highest in two years, although we’ve had rates in the 50 to 55 percent range as recently as fall 2022 and pretty consistently prior to that. What that says to me is that while we are doing better at getting a larger percentage of students graduated in four years, we need to be even more attentive to getting stopouts to re-enroll, and unpacking better what is causing students to take longer to degree, knowing that each additional semester when enrolling in 12 to 19 credits costs $8,374, or what equates to roughly $36 an hour of course instruction for a three-credit class. And we do know that paying for college is among the biggest barriers a student faces, particularly as time progresses. Using a combination of Power BI dashboards (the Progress to Graduation one being especially informative and available to anyone) and Navigate Analytics (available to associate deans and other key student success staff at WP), I invite you to unpack the four-, five-, and six-year rate for students in your college and department. Some questions to ask:

• Where do our students disproportionately struggle?
• If a student changes their major to ours, what are the implications for time to degree?
• How many credits does a student in our department’s major actually graduate with?
• For faculty mentors: What do you notice about the academic progress of your assigned mentees (if any) from the prior two years?

Here at WP, whereas we may not have a winter Commencement, we do have winter graduations, and students on (or off) track to finish in May or August all count in the reported fall 2026 graduation rates. Now is the right time to aid them on that critical pathway to obtaining the degree, worth about $1.2 million over a lifetime of earnings above a high school graduate only. WP also receives performance-based funding that is in part tied to graduation rates.

Academic News

Office of Sponsored Programs Updates. Despite the challenges in Washington, WP continues to be actively engaged in grant writing and receiving: 


New Proposals


Quay Davis in the College of Adult and Professional Studies submitted a $1 million proposal to the NJ Department of Labor for workforce development grant opportunities. 


David Fuentes submitted a new proposal ($720,000) to the NJ Department of Labor to grow and expand its Teacher Registered Apprenticeship Program (T-RAP) through GAINS.


New Awards


We received “notice of intent to fund” the OSHE Hunger Free Program run through Student Development (Donna Minnich-Spuhler, PI). 


Lydia Albuquerque was invited to continue her work with the NJ Department of Health, working with a clinic in Newark to improve health outcomes through a community-based approach to prevention, education and self-management. The project, entitled, Empowering Healthy Hearts: A Community-Based Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke Prevention and Management Initiative, was funded for another year at $60,000.


We are negotiating the continuation of the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) subaward with Rutgers, which was previously thought to be cancelled by NIH but has received another year of funding. A PI is yet to be named. 


Melissa Rosario Jimenez, director of the WP Small Business Development Center, received a new award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for $128,000, as well as $97,000 for the New Jersey Business Action Center subaward from Rutgers University. 


The College of Education’s Dean Amy Ginsberg and Michele Moon in Field Experience Partnerships, also Coordinator for NJ History Day, were renewed for another year from the NJ Historical Commission for $75,000 to provide services to the statewide History Day program. Volunteers to serve as judges invited!


The Shea Center received another year of funding from the NJ State Council on the Arts for general program support for $56,720 through Craig Woelpper. 

Sherrine Schuldt received another year of funding from the NJ Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services for education and prevention programs for Passaic County in the amount of $66,382.

Please join us in Celebrating Sandy Hill. As mentioned in a prior campus communication, Sandy Hill will be retiring at the end of this calendar year. Please come and celebrate her from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. this Friday, December 5, in the Provost’s Office.

Facts & Figures


• Percentage of main campus Fall 2024 1^st Year Cohort students with 30+ college credits earned after year one: 47.9 percent.

• Percentage of main campus Fall 2024 1^st Year Cohort students with 30+ college credits earned after year one: 93.4 percent that came in with dual enrollment credit.

• Percentage of African American or Hispanic Fall 2024 1^st Year Cohort students with 30+ college credits earned after year one: 40 percent.

• Percentage of African American or Hispanic Fall 2024 1^st Year Cohort students with 30+ college credits earned after year one: 91.8 percent that came in with dual enrollment credit.

Quotables

"In a single generation, we've fallen from 1^st place to 12^th place in college graduation rates for young adults."

—Barack Obama (2010) speech setting a goal to reverse this trend.


Current US ranking: 12^th place. Ahead of us are (in this order): Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Ireland, Russia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, Australia, & Switzerland.

The Provost’s Office is Brenda, Claudia C., Jonathan, Kara, Rhonda, Sandy, and Josh. You can reach us at

973.720.2122 • provost@wpunj.edu