I would hope that we could find some better reason for increasing the graduation rate at UNM or any other university than simply providing more fodder for the military-industrial complex in which universities have become such an integral part. Even when one graduates, if he or she is not able to become what use to be called in the military “cannon fodder” to be into the maw of the corporate beast, then the degree is spoken of as a waste of time. Once again, the power structure that still pulls the strings of this country from its multinational perch will demand that if we cannot provide them with degreed drones they will simply have to move one more part of their machine somewhere else where they can further impoverish another part of the Third World. Truly, it would be better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

Why graduate? The University sent a strong and clear message to students a few years back with the hiring of Billy Sparks. This non-degreed former spokesperson for Governor Richardson was given a high paying job based on his political connections, not his academic qualifications.

No, UNM is doing an excellent job preparing students for the real world of New Mexico: education doesn’t matter because it is not what you know but who you know!

It would be nice to further shed light on the reasons the other 56% of students have “dropped out”. Could it be that a substantial portion of them were fed up and transferred to another institution such as NMSU or to a university in another state? Some may have pursued a vocational path at CNM, ITT-Tech, University of Phoenix, etc. Some may have also come to the conclusion that a degree just isn’t worth the expense anymore. This should come as no surprise in the state of New Mexico where there seems to be too many degrees chasing too few jobs.

This overly simplistic analysis of the data does not take into account that many, many UNM students are either part time or work while attending UNM. The assumption is made that every student drops out if they haven’t graduated within 72 months of enrolling as a freshman.

In reality, many students take lighter loads or semesters off to pay for vital expenses such as childcare. The author should note that the average age for a UNM undergrad is well above the national average.

Speaking of the importance of context, this is the full paragraph referred to from the New York Times article:

Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as “failure factories,” and they are the norm.

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I am a graduate student who just returned to my studies due to job loss.I wonder if there are any statistics that capture undergraduate students that drop out and return to school later in life. If it’s one thing the UNM_OLIT program has taught me is that education is a lifelong process. When I see numbers like this related to graduation rates and Hispanic population in New Mexico I wonder if its just not the system. By that I mean the public school system, CNM and UNM just not being proactive in addressing the education VOID. The leadership in education in New Mexico needs to be more proactive to the needs of the population as opposed to being reactive to the statistics. Whatever the solution education in this state (or any state for that matter) is key to economic development. Most political officials in New Mexico like to share numbers for their platforms but they don’t really put much action into those forums.

This statistic of 44% graduation rate is just a meaningless number until the reasons for dropping out come to light. Maybe UNM’s student body is busy with other concerns, as Donour points out. Maybe UNM refuses to pass unqualified candidates.
I work at a university where grades are a joke – if you sleep through the entire class, you still get a “B”, and you have to go to a special effort to fail outright.
Labeling UNM as a “failure factory” is leaping to an unfounded conclusion.

Comparison of UNM to National University graduation rates is a meaningful comparison. The comparison stats must use apples to apples etc. I would hazard a guess that a majority of UNM students come from the APS system; if that’s true, many may not be prepared as well as high school graduates in other states. Additionally, with special programs attempting to get “as many minorities as possible” enrolled at UNM, the fact that not all students are destined for college is forgotten. It is a diservice, not a service, to set students up to fail.

The overall national 6-year graduation rate is 58%, for comparison to UNM’s 44%.

Another flaw in Dr. Ortega’s Albuquerque Journal op-ed was her comparison of an old 4-year graduation rate (23%) to UNM’s current 6-year graduation rate (41%).

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Ms. Johnson is justified in identifying graduation rates as a major concern for UNM with particular emphasis on ethnic groups. However, she is misguided and erroneous in personally attacking Ms. Ortega on the data. The study is likely a Department of Education longitudinal study that tracks students over 8.5 years and actually tracks the student and not the institution data. The result is the rate of graduation is actually higher and therefore desirable to use for comparisons. The cohort is not recent but the data analysis is because it takes a substantial amount of time to do a longitudinal study. This is the most recent data. Also a hint to Ms. Johnson or anyone who wants to compare graduation rates by ethnicity. POPULATION SIZE AND ENTRANCE PREPARATION MATTER.

Che

Hey Che. Yes, a longitudinal study is useful for many reasons, but not as employed by Dr. Ortega. The study is the NLES:1988/2000 study (see reference below). For a comparison to NLES data, Dr. Ortega should have compared UNM’s 6-year Hispanic graduation rate (42%) to the 6-year NLES graduation rate (~40%), not the 4-year NLES rate (23%). Dr. Ortega’s assertion that UNM is graduating Hispanics at twice the “national”/NLES rate is incorrect.

Dr. Ortega didn’t say in the op-ed that she was referring to a longitudinal study of 25,000 Hispanics. She compared UNM to “the national rate”. Has Dr. Ortega really believed, for years, that Hispanics are graduating at a rate of 23% around the country?

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Sari commented above that context is important and, taking the NYT article in context, concluded cheerfully that UNM is not an unusual failure factory but an average failure factory. Well, that takes the cake!

I applaud anyone who continues to work for a degree while raising children or earning a living no matter how long that may require. It is possible that the demographics for New Mexico are such that ordinary statistics and comparisons to not apply. If that is true, then UNM provost Dr. Ortega should not have applied such statistics without explanation.

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President Schmidly- Can you read this. Why are you STILL here? This isn’t football where you can give clowns $ 91,000 bonuses for achievements made by other athletic directors. When these numbers are further analyzed, it will be a tribute to your ineptitude.It doesn’t take many years and granting you a big pension to clearly see, it doesn’t require a great degree of perspicacity to see what an abject failure you are. It’s little wonder the faculty gave you a no confidence vote not too long ago. What a joke you’ve turned out to be. Unfortunately, the brunt of the joke is the taxpayers, the students, the alumni, the faculty and non teaching employees. Su trabajo est muy malo!

To compare graduation rates, look at selectivity, number of low income students, and population size for comparisons. A national study with the number of low income Hispanics as 13.8% of the population is hardly a valid comparison for UNM. Retired Mathematician, the study was published in 2006. This is hardly dated. If you knew anything about the Department of Education Research you would know this is the amount of time it takes them and also that this particular researcher is very well respected no matter how long it takes. Good thing you are retired.

Well, Che, let’s have a demonstration of your prowess.

Compare UNM’s current Hispanic graduation rate with the national rate. State your data, sources and methods.

A refinement to a sentence in my letter:

The study Ortega used for a tracked 25,000 students of different ethnicities who were in the 8th grade in 1988; only 10%, or 2,500 of these students were Hispanic.

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Hey! Look on the bright side! UNM’s graduation rate is higher than my old high school’s!

Come on people, keep politics out of this, keep corruption out of this, keep opinion out of this. Keep with the facts. The fact is, we have a 44% graduation rate. What are we going to do to fix this? And if your response is it’s politics, or corruption, or money, or ‘who you know,’ that we need to get rid of to fix this, then i hope you arn’t in a situation to try to help things, because that definitely won’t. If there’s one thing i’ve learned about odds, and percentages, it’s that they can be beat, and they WILL be beat. The only way to bring up the graduation rate, is to decide, ‘i’m going to graduate.’ You can overcome anything if you decide you’re going to. Where I come from, I’ve overcome odds of graduating high school, i’ve overcome odds of going to college, i’ve overcome odds of not being in jail by now, i’ve overcome the odds of being able to walk properly after an injury… You think i’m going to let a simple matter of there being a 41% chance of me personally graduating college slow me down? Laughable.

Bravo, previous commenter! You have a great attitude and you will succeed. Good luck to you.

A couple more refinements based on more research, some drawn from the excellent new book called “Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College in America’s Public Universities”.

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