A rural public research university with a wide array of degrees, low admission standards and a significant party culture. These general stereotypes are fairly accurate when it comes to the University of Idaho. But there is one trend at UI that does not receive much attention, which is that a large amount of UI students that are failing to graduate, and end up dropping out of school within six years.
From the freshman class of 2006, only 56 percent received a degree within in six years of school. Another UI institutional research statistic is more alarming for freshman. Over the past 10 years, on average 22.3 percent of full time freshman students do not return for a second year.
However, it is not just UI that is not graduating a large percent of its students. Other large research universities like WSU and Boise State, only graduated 67 percent and 31 percent of their undergraduate students in six years respectively, according to the National Statistics for Higher Education.
By these numbers, the UI is struggling to educate, and graduate a large percentage of their students; students that were either not ready for college, or simply did not want to go to school.
It is important to note, that just because one stops going to school does not mean they have lost their desire to learn or even achieve a degree later on. A student might drop out due to financial struggles, family obligations or to pursue other opportunities that do not require a degree.
That being said, many students – particularly freshmen – drop out because they are not psychologically ready for the responsibility of college. Many cannot handle the pressure of social situations with drugs and alcohol and still perform well in the classroom. Many also find themselves without the skills and/or desire to keep up academically, and end up failing out.
Other students find themselves being pressured into college by their parents, communities or public education systems, however upon arrival, discover they have little desire to learn or graduate.
Unfortunately, I cannot find these statistics surprising.
UI, like most large research universities, has a high acceptance rate and does not require a strenuous high school workload to be accepted.
Then take into account a past president – Duane Nellis – who called for a total of 16,000 students on UI campus by 2020. However, as of spring 2013, there were only 10,700.
Nellis put pressure on administrators to fulfill his absurd enrollment numbers making it one of the top priorities for his tenure.
Also factor in that UI has seen state funding drop from 71 percent of its total budget in 2001, to 49 percent today, as reported by The Argonaut in April. Student tuition and fees now pay for 47 percent of the total university budget. Keith Ickes, UI director of planning and budget, described this as a “teetering point,” where if the university has one more year of “bad” state funding, the majority of UI’s budget would come from student tuition and fees.
With high acceptance rates, irrational enrollment expectations and a university whose financial future depends on high enrollment, the pressure is on.
What is the result?
A university that will only graduate 55 percent of its freshmen class, because they accepted students who could not handle college. Not mention the students who individually spent thousands of dollars in loans, federal student aid and family money to figure out that college was not right for them.
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]