Now the question of what to do about the country's unimpressive graduation rates is on the agenda, from college presidents' offices to state houses. In the latest sign of the trend, former Princeton president William G. Bowen will lay out an ambitious research agenda on the question during a speech today in New York.
Normally, a scholar's decision to take on an academic topic is hardly news. But Bowen, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is the kind of researcher whose work is so influential that his curiosity about a subject can raise its profile.
His data-driven studies on college athletes, affirmative action, and college access for the poor have all sparked nationwide debate in recent years, and he attracted widespread attention last year with a speech at the University of Virginia that called for class-based affirmative action in college admissions.
Bowen's latest project will examine in detail who graduates and who doesn't -- and why -- at a group of about 20 varied universities. In an interview, he described the message he will deliver to a Goldman Sachs Foundation gathering on issues facing college trustees as his opening salvo on the topic.
''The United States has always said it believes in opportunity and social mobility and fairness," Bowen said. ''If you find that the odds of getting through are very different for different groups of people, that's something you ought to be concerned about."
It's known that elite schools have generally higher graduation rates than do other schools. But what's less clear is why the graduation rates at seemingly similar colleges vary so much. For instance, the main campuses of Penn State and the University of Minnesota have comparable price tags, student SAT scores, and percentages of students from poor backgrounds. Yet Penn State graduates more than 80 percent of its students, and Minnesota barely half.
Racial gaps are another concern. Overall, the federal figures report 57 percent of white students finish their degree, compared with 44 percent of Hispanics and 39 percent of blacks. A 2004 Education Trust report found a quarter of schools have gaps between whites and blacks of 20 points or more.
