WASHINGTON (RNS)—Religiously affiliated universities rank the highest nationwide in graduating their students, while hundreds of public and private universities fall far below the low average of graduated students, according to a recent report based on data from the U.S. Department of Education.
From Catholic to Jewish and Baptist to Methodist, religious colleges and universities topped the charts in the American Enterprise Institute survey, which found an average of just 53 percent of entering students at four-year colleges graduate within six years.
Many institutions fared far worse, with graduation rates below 20 and 30 percent for students who entered in the fall of 2001. Religiously affiliated universities, however, rarely appeared in the rock-bottom rankings and held most of the top 10 slots across six categories of admissions selectivity.
Top 10 schools religious
Among the “competitive” category of schools, which require students to have a C to B- high school grade average for admission, 100 percent of the top 10 schools to graduate their students were of religious orientation. The College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, Mass., graduated 89 percent of their students; Texas Southern University, by contrast, graduated only 12 percent.
The report ranked colleges based on admissions standards that ranged from “most competitive” to “noncompetitive.” It cited reasons beyond admissions criteria that affected graduation rates, including student demographics and the schools’ institutional mission. The authors, however, did not explicitly mention the colleges’ religious background as factors.
“While student motivation, intent and ability matter greatly, our analysis suggests that the practices of higher education institutions matter, too,” the report said.
Credits the mission statements
Brian Williams, vice president of enrollment at John Carroll University in Cleveland, said religiously affiliated universities produce more graduates because their “mission statement attracts a certain type of student, as well as a certain type of employee.”
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The report focused on the extremes of schools that either fail or succeed at handing out earned degrees. As a disclaimer, the authors repeated that the graduation rates do not always represent the quality of the university per se but possibly the quality of their mission statements.
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