While it is wide knowledge that the attendance levels for today’s community colleges are higher than they have been in decades, the community college graduation rates do not always reflect this growing trend toward attending community colleges rather than four year institutions. But this does not generally mean that the people who get into these colleges end up leaving. There are other factors that often need to be looked into to understand why the number of attendees of community colleges and the community college graduation rates do not always add up.
For one, community college graduation rates for certain institutions are stellar and are poor for others. This often has nothing to do with the students themselves and everything to do with the institutions teaching them. Sometimes, students start out at one school and quickly learn that the community college is not giving them the tools they will need to succeed in the workplace today. Other times, they realize these institutions do not care as much as they should about their student bodies, and they find community colleges elsewhere.
Another reason why community college graduation rates do not always add up to the attendance levels is that a lot of students take quite a long time to graduate. Many attendees at today’s community colleges either work full time or part time or are raising families while they are attending classes. They have lots on their collective plates, and they are juggling a whole lot too. Therefore, they may not have aspirations of taking two years to complete a degree program. Instead, they might be fine with it taking them three or four years to graduate.
Lastly, these community college graduation rates do not stack up 100 percent of the time with the rates of attendance because they are compared too often with US college graduation rates in general. The goals for community college students often are different from the goals that other college students have. So these numbers sometimes are skewed because they take into account national college graduation rates collectively rather than graduation rates by college.
For anyone with an interest in attending a community college, then, looking more closely into these community college graduation rates is necessary. Another good idea is to look into college athlete graduation rates by institution if a person is attempting to try out for a team once enrolled. For college athletes graduation rates should be just as important as the general rates of graduation for others at these institutions.