Colleges offer 4-year guide to graduation

BUFFALO -- If recent history is a guide, less than half of the freshmen arriving on college campuses as part of the Class of 2016 this fall will live up to that billing. More likely, they'll need until 2017. Even more likely, 2018.

A four-year college degree in many ways has become more suggestion than reality, to the chagrin of institutions whose reputations, rankings and recruiting prowess are tied to their success in handing out diplomas.

So as a way to improve the graduation rate, universities are promising students a four-year road map in exchange for a commitment they'll stay on track. The University at Buffalo, one of the largest institutions in New York State with about 29,000 undergraduate and graduate students, is among the latest to do so.

"We keep calling it a four-year degree," said A. Scott Weber, UB's vice provost of education, "so it seems reasonable to think about programs that reignite that discussion."

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities doesn't keep a tally of how many schools offer such degree guarantees but sees the number growing. Along with New York's state colleges in Fredonia and Oswego, the University of the Pacific in California, University of Minnesota, Midland University in Nebraska and Iowa State offer them, as well as such smaller, private institutions as Virginia Wesleyan College, Juniata College in Pennsylvania and Buffalo's own Medaille College.

About 38 percent of students who were freshmen in 2004 earned a bachelor's degree in four years from the college where they began, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. About 58 percent graduated within six years.

"This issue of college completion is a big deal and it's getting a lot of focus, as it should be, from President Obama to state governors on down," said Daniel Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.