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College Completion: Additional Efforts Could Help Education with Its Completion Goals

GAO-03-568 Published: May 23, 2003. Publicly Released: Jun 23, 2003.
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Highlights

Because of concerns that not enough students who start college are completing a bachelor's degree, we examined (1) the extent to which students who enroll in a 4-year college complete a bachelor's degree and identify the factors that affect completion; (2) what states and 4-year colleges and universities are doing to foster bachelor's degree completion; and (3) what the Department of Education (Education) is doing to foster degree completion.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Education As Education moves forward with its plan to hold colleges and universities accountable for their performance in graduating their students, the Secretary of Education should consider multiple measures that would help account for other goals of higher education, such as increasing participation, as well as differences in mission, selectivity, and programmatic offerings of postsecondary institutions. Education should work with states and colleges to determine what would be most helpful for strengthening the accountability of institutions and ensuring positive outcomes for students.
Closed – Implemented
Education officials indicated that while such multiple measures are not currently authorized by statute, the agency remains committed to considering ways to implement multiple measures when HEA reauthorization activity begins in the next Congress. Education indicates that it is interested in strengthening the accountability of institutions and improving outcomes for students. Toward that end, Education expanded data on student retention and completion for institutions of higher education to ensure that data can be disaggregated by gender and race/ethnicity. The agency also collects data on transfer rates at institutions to help put retention and graduation rates into context.
Department of Education The Secretary of Education should take steps to identify and disseminate information about promising practices in the areas of retention and graduation across all sectors of postsecondary education.
Closed – Implemented
According to Education officials, the agency funded numerous projects related to retention, completion, and graduation through the Fund for Improving Postsecondary Education. Descriptions and outcomes for these projects are readily available via the program's online project database.

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Topics

College studentsColleges and universitiesDisadvantaged personsFederal grantsScholarship programsEducational researchComparative analysisStrategic planningStudentsParticipation rates