Student Demographics and Graduation Rates Within Six Years

Objective and Scope

Examine the correlation between various student demographics and graduation to help identify characteristics of students that, on average, have higher or lower likelihood of finishing their bachelors degree within six years (150% of normal time).

Analysis included fall semester first-time post-secondary full-time bachelors degree-seeking students over the most recent five years of cohorts that have had six years to graduate and whether they returned to ISU the subsequent fall or not. The focus of the study revolved around student demographics including Age, Sex, Race/Ethnicity, First Generation and Pell Eligibility (proxy for income).

As many factors may contribute to graduation rates that may also be correlated with these demographics it is essential to control for the externalities that would otherwise misrepresent the ISU equity (fairness) story. As such, a multivariate logistic regression was performed to better isolate if, after controlling for a closer to complete picture of the student, differences in demographics still exists. Control variables included various characteristics about the student prior to their arrival at ISU (e.g. high school activity), financial variables (e.g. aid received), and initial ISU activity (e.g. chosen course taking behavior). See the “Variables Considered” section for more information.

Key Findings

High School GPA was a better predictor of six year graduation rates than any student demographic considered in this study. Overall differences in graduation rates between these different demographics appear to be more of a result of differing starting points, on average. For example, overall, males have lower grad rates than females. However, males start at ISU with, on average, a lower high school GPA. After controlling for high school GPA and other factors, the effect of sex was statistically insignificant. Statistically significant differences between certain demographics did exist, but with relatively small effect sizes, varied confidence intervals and sensitivity to changes in statistical modeling. A highlight of these findings can be found below:

Sex: Statistically insignificant.

Race/ethnicity: Students who are Hispanic were slightly more likely to be graduate (at 90% confidence and not significant when excluding ACT/SAT score variable in the modeling).

Age: Older students were more likely to graduate after controlling for other factors. Significant but effect size was relatively small. In addition, low sample size on older entering students is a limitation to this finding.

First generation: Statistically insignificant.

Pell eligibility: Students who were pell eligible were slightly less likely to graduate in six years

Variables Considered

The interactive tables below displays the various variables considered, how each was defined and how graduation rates varies within the variable.