Last week’s focus on first-year retention was the first in a series of posts about the key metrics UWM uses to measure the success of its students. Six-year graduation (prior to a student’s seventh fall term) is a standard metric of higher education, and one that aligns well with UWM’s access mission and its student body, given our high numbers of first-generation students and students who work full time or have families or other outside obligations. The chart below shows the five most recent six-year graduation rates for fall new freshmen cohorts (green line; from OAIR’s Retention & Graduation Trends dashboard). Worth noting: Students who transfer and graduate from a different institution are not included in these figures.
Six-year graduation rates
We have made some good progress, but we still have work to do on this front; as with first-year retention, the median rate of our peers is higher than ours. If you are interested in learning more about how we compare to our peers, a good place to start is the 2019 edition of UWM’s “IPEDS Data Feedback Report.”