{"id":9316,"date":"2013-07-01T15:07:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T19:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=9316"},"modified":"2013-07-01T15:07:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T19:07:14","slug":"why-jcc-graduation-numbers-are-wow-not-meh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/07\/01\/why-jcc-graduation-numbers-are-wow-not-meh\/","title":{"rendered":"Why JCC graduation numbers are “wow!”, not “meh…”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: jeco<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

When is a 46 percent graduation rate a good graduation rate?<\/p>\n

The Watertown Daily Times is reporting today<\/a> that Jefferson Community College had the highest six-year graduation rate among state community colleges, for students who enrolled in 2002. That number comes from a study by the Center for Urban Studies: It’s a combination of students who completed a two-year associate degree (29 percent), and students who transferred to receive bachelors degrees (17 percent).<\/p>\n

This doesn’t sound so impressive, Vice President for Academic Affairs Thomas J. Finch admitted to the paper: “The biggest part of that is people see 46 percent and say ‘big deal’.” But here’s why he says it is<\/em>, in fact, a big deal. College graduation rates aren’t measured the same way as high school rates (where clearly 46 percent wouldn’t be so hot): If a student decides to transfer to another community college, the state considers that person a dropout. It’s also more common for people to take only a few classes at a community college, or to do a year at the local community college to save money on school.<\/p>\n

There’s also the additional fact that many of JCC’s students are Fort Drum soldiers, and they don’t necessarily stay around to get a two-year degree (that actually doesn’t count against the graduation rate, by the way.) And for others, life intervenes and they take more than six years to earn the associates degree.<\/p>\n

JCC Vice-President for Students Betsy Penrose told the paper that JCC’s graduation rate has improved since 2002 — as of last fall, 34.34 percent of the 2006 cohort had completed an associates degree — compared to the SUNY-wide rate of 32.17 percent, and the national rate of 27.67 percent. “So, it appears we are trending in a positive direction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When is a 46 percent graduation rate a good graduation rate? The Watertown Daily Times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6,12644,12643,878],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9321,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions\/9321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}