Leading Research Universities Commit to Improved Data on Undergraduate Education

Although the announcement was made three years ago, NYU this year will be providing data to the AAU’s Data Exchange (AAUDE). Collective statistics will report on undergraduate performance such as graduation rates, time to degree, and careers following graduation.

What makes this particular initiative different from past reports is that the study will track the student’s undergraduate progress through graduation. This will allow for a better understanding of retention and stopout rates by including the student's progress at transferred institutions.

In the past, we have made assumptions that when a large percentage of students don’t graduate from the same institution where they first enrolled, the institution has failed in its mission. For adult undergraduates, this isn’t necessarily the case. For these students, things such as job relocation or financial burdens impact their ability to stay at one institution until graduation. A study of 12 institutions revealed that retention of adult undergraduates hovered around 50-70 percent. Not great when compared with traditional aged student retention of 80-90+ percent.

This new "retention" benchmark will focus less on stopout rates and more on the students ultimately graduating along with the careers they pursue afterward -- regardless of the number of institutions involved.

Read More or Visit AAU's Website at www.aau.edu

Adult Undergraduate Benchmarking Study (2008)