UA-FAYETTEVILLE graduation rate up, short of goal.

Percentage still short of goal

FAYETTEVILLE — Darwin Adams sat out a semester for financial reasons after being told by an adviser that he had maxed out on the federal student loan aid available to him.

“But I looked online and did some research and found there was another option,” said Adams, an apparel studies major who first enrolled in 2009 at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

The time away from class contributed to his not yet earning a degree, though Adams, 24, said he’s now back on track to graduate. The extra time means he won’t count in UA’s six-year graduation rate, a window for graduation that’s been the focus of UA leaders.

The university announced this week that 62.5 percent of first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who enrolled in the fall of 2009 earned a degree within six years, a nudge upward compared with the 62.3 percent rate for the 2008 freshman cohort.

For the 2009 cohort used in the calculation, 1,806 earned degrees within six years. For the 2008 cohort, it was 1,855 students who earned degrees within six years.

It’s the highest graduation rate since UA began calculating the rate in 1986, according to a statement released

Wednesday to the university community.

Yet the rate failed to meet a goal of 66 percent by 2015 that had been set under the administration of G. David Gearhart, UA’s chancellor from 2008 until this summer.

“It was a good goal, and we didn’t meet it and we need to meet our goals,” said interim Chancellor Dan Ferritor.

The university also tracks its four-year graduation rate, which was 42.1 percent for students entering in 2011, a tiny drop down from the 42.3 four-year graduation rate for students entering in 2010.

For the 2011 cohort, it was 1,856 students who earned degrees within four years. For the 2010 cohort, it was 1,596 students who earned degrees within four years.

UA’s six-year graduation rate has generally been increasing. Freshmen entering in 1999 had a six-year graduation rate of 56.4 percent, with 1,235 students earning degrees.

Still, the numbers now have not matched goals set under two different university leaders.

John White, UA chancellor from 1997 to 2008, called for a 66 percent graduation rate by 2010. Goals outlined under Gearhart, in addition to the 66 percent goal, also call for a 70 percent six-year graduation rate by 2021.

A new chancellor, Joseph Steinmetz, will begin at UA on Jan. 1. He called UA’s six-year graduation rate “way too low” and “a number we certainly have to work on.”

Steinmetz comes to UA from a job as provost at Ohio State University, which reported a six-year graduation rate of 83.1 percent for students entering in 2009, with 5,590 earning a degree, according to information found on the university’s website.

Steinmetz also talked about the importance of earning a degree on time.

“One of the things we can do to lower the cost of a college education, perhaps more than anything else, is get students out in four years. Those extra years add to the cost significantly to a college education,”

Steinmetz said.

Another member of the freshman class of 2009, Reaves Alewine, said he thought his grades were fine during his time at UA.

But a series of alcohol-related brushes with the law led him to leave Fayetteville at the urging of his parents.

The university now offers an online alcohol education course for incoming freshmen. Alewine said he did not remember taking such a course when he was in school, adding that he thinks that such a program would have helped him.

“I was just a young high school kid going to college, and the college life there is crazy,” said Alewine, 25, now living in Dallas and a student at the Art Institute of Dallas. He said he blamed himself for his struggles at UA.

“All of my friends have graduated from U of A, and it makes me sad because I’m not there with them,” Alewine said.

Adams credited an “amazing” financial aid adviser for helping him, but he also said he was given incorrect information by a different aid adviser.

He said he also struggled to pass college algebra, taking the course multiple times.

Adams said he asked an academic adviser for other options, but did not learn until recently that another course also satisfies a mathematics requirement at UA. He said he’s now taking quantitative reasoning, a class that he said he fully expects to pass.

“A lot of times advisers, they don’t meet the needs of the students,” Adams said, though he added, “there are good staff members there, I can’t deny that, because they were able to help me.”

Neither of his parents are college graduates, he said, but he credited them with offering support to push him to continue seeking his degree.

Ferritor said graduation and retention “has to be considered job one by everybody on campus.”

Alewine said he struggled to stay motivated at UA while taking courses to satisfy basic degree requirements.

“You can’t just make someone go through college. They have to want to do it themselves,” he said.