A recent story by The New York Times cited NEIU as having one of the worst graduation rates in the nation. The story was based on Department of Education statistics that may not have taken into account transfer students and those who practice “stopout” behavior.
NEIU only has statistics available about students who transfer to other state and community colleges. Students who transfer to a private college or a college outside the state of Illinois are not counted.
Stopout behavior involves leaving the university for a semester or more before continuing study, which is common for many NEIU students who must work and raise families. The time spent away counts as time to graduation, and no official statistics are kept on such behavior.
According to Matt Suerth, research specialist / data manager in the Institutional Studies Department, the transfer rate of students transferring out of NEIU to other schools is approximately 40 percent.
Another issue affecting the calculation of graduation rates involves the use of Social Security numbers to track students.
The current system involves analyzing schools’ student data, looking for Social Security numbers that match up. NEIU recently has been phasing out the use of Social Security numbers security reasons.
The statistics used by The New York Times only focused on students that graduated from Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and that does not make up a large part of the NEIU student body.
According to President Salme Steinberg, 53 percent of NEIU students transfer into the university. “Time to degree is a function of enrollment, part-time or full time.” She continued, saying that in many cases, “Money will determine whether the students enroll full time or part time.”
The CPS statistics also refer to the minority student population. According to statistics from diverseeducation.com, NEIU is ranked 81st nationally for Hispanic bachelor graduates and 30th for African-American graduates.
According to the 2006 edition of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, however, NEIU ranks fourteenth and sixteenth in the number of undergraduate education degrees earned by Hispanics and Asian-Americans, respectively.
“There are far too many Americans who want to go to college but cannot – because they’re either not prepared or cannot afford it,” said Margaret Spellings, secretary of the Department of Education, on www.ed.gov.
“No current rankings system of colleges and universities directly measures the most critical point student performance, and learning,” as Spellings said in her speech To help make the U.S. higher education system more affordable, accessible and consumer-friendly.
NEIU is known for its affordability, setting the bar as the lowest of Chicago’s four-year colleges, offering tuition at $175 a credit hour. As President Steinberg said, NEIU is “an institution of choice.”