Not everyone who sets out on a path toward an online degree sticks with the program. About one in every two Americans who begin college distance learning or traditional college never finish it, according to the Lumina Foundation of Education. Now, some states are working to improve college graduation rates.
Through an alliance known as Complete College America, representatives from 17 states plan to work with colleges and universities to improve graduation rates, according to a March 2010 Associate Press report. As part of a separate initiative intended to boost college completion rates, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New Mexico plan to next year allow high school students to take college entry exams in the 10th grade. Students who pass the exams have the option to earn their diplomas immediately and move on to community college, while others would have a better idea early on of what’s expected at the college level and be able to retest in their junior and senior years, The New York Times reported.
Maintaining alternative high school credentials or a full-time job, delaying college entry, having dependents and attending college part-time have been among the risk factors associated with not completing college, according to U.S. Department of Education info cited from the Pew Research Center. A student’s single parent and financially independent status can also make a difference, the information suggests. African-American and Hispanic undergraduates at the time maintained more of these risk factors than white undergraduates did, the research center reported.
The percentage of minority college students, and Hispanic students particularly, has been increasing, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. A recent American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy report confirmed that fewer Hispanic students complete college than those of other racial and ethnic groups. Only 51 percent of Hispanics at the average college or university complete a bachelor’s degree in six years as compared with 59 percent of white students at those same schools, the “Rising to the Challenge” report noted. » Read more: Distance Doesn’t Mean a Stop to Learning With Online Colleges
