PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

How do student characteristics predict university graduation odds?

2013-07-31
(Press-News.org) Los Angeles, CA (July 31, 2013) In his January 2009 State of the Union address, President Obama announced his goal for the U.S. to lead the world in college graduates by 2020. While policymakers often blame university systems for low graduation among college students, according to new research, characteristics known about a student before he or she even enters a college classroom can accurately predict graduation rates. This new study, published in SAGE Open, finds that characteristics such as fulltime enrollment status, race, transfer credits, and expected family contribution predict successful graduation from college.

Researcher Tim Gramling, LP.D., conducted research on characteristics of more than 2,500 students from the full population of one large, for-profit university and found that higher GPA, fulltime enrollment status, black race (over whites), a higher number of transfer credits when enrolling, and higher expected family contribution weighed most heavily in accurately predicting higher graduation odds.

Taken together, these five characteristics predict graduation rates with 86.9% accuracy, despite the fact that federal policy has worked under the assumption that tax status of an institution is the primary determinant of student graduation (i.e., non-profit v. for-profit). Additionally, when GPA is removed as one of the predicting factors, the remaining four characteristics (determined before a student even begins his or her studies), still predict graduation rates with 74.3% accuracy.

"The findings of this study challenge the traditional assumptions for improving university graduation rates. Because student characteristics have such a dramatic impact on graduation odds, changing federal tax status of a university would have little positive impact on graduation," Gramling stated.

Gramling offered different ways to improve graduation rates based on his findings, "Policymakers could increase funding for lower income students which would mitigate the need for expected family contribution and provide incentives for them to attend school full time – both factors that have shown accurately predict higher graduation odds."

The findings of the study also had implications for traditional methods for rewarding higher GPAs. Since the study found that black students were more likely than white students to graduate, especially if they had a GPA between a 2.0 and a 2.5, public policy that rewards high GPAs and punishes low GPAs would disproportionately impact black students.

Gramling continued, "As blacks exhibited higher odds of graduating than whites at this campus, the U.S. Department of Education should explore how for-profit institutions can benefit black students, especially as other research does not suggest that blacks have higher (or even equal) odds of graduating than whites at traditional institutions."

INFORMATION:

For an embargoed copy of the article titled "How five student characteristics accurately predict for-profit university graduation odds" published in SAGE Open, please email camille.gamboa@sagepub.com.

SAGE Open is an award-winning, peer-reviewed, "Gold" open access journal from SAGE that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. http://sgo.sagepub.com/

SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped informand educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. http://www.sagepublications.com

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Could planting trees in the desert mitigate climate change?

2013-07-31
As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and consequent global temperature rise, researchers are looking for a Plan B to mitigate climate change. A group of German scientists has now come up with an environmentally friendly method that they say could do just that. The technique, dubbed carbon farming, consists in planting trees in arid regions on a large scale to capture CO2. They publish their study today in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). "Carbon farming addresses the root source of climate ...

Cleaning solar panels often not worth the cost, engineers at UC San Diego find

2013-07-31
Don't hire someone to wash your dirty solar panels. That's the conclusion of a study recently conducted by a team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego. Their findings were published in the July 25 online issue of Solar Energy. Researchers found panels that hadn't been cleaned, or rained on, for 145 days during a summer drought in California, lost only 7.4 percent of their efficiency. Overall, for a typical residential solar system of 5 kilowatts, washing panels halfway through the summer would translate into a mere $20 gain in electricity production ...

August 2013 Lithosphere concentrates on China, the Himalaya, India, and North America

2013-07-31
Boulder, Colo., USA - The complete August 2013 issue of Lithosphere is now available online. Papers covering the lithosphere of China and Tibet dominate the issue, with articles on the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and the Idaho, USA, Snake River plain as well. The issue also features an article on diamond prospecting in India, a numerical modeling study, and an open access research focus article that asks, "Is it possible to predict the past?" Abstracts are online at http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary ...

1 size doesn't fit all

2013-07-31
One size chart doesn't fit all when it comes to evaluating birth weight and health outcomes of newborns. A new study, recently published online by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, shows ethnicity-specific birth weight charts are better at identifying newborns who are small for gestational age (SGA), a classification associated with hypothermia, hypoglycemia, infection and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. "When we expect Chinese, South Asian and Caucasian babies to be the same size at birth, we risk misclassifying small but healthy Chinese ...

Hide, ambush, kill, eat: The giant water bug Lethocerus patruelis kills a fish

2013-07-31
VIDEO: This video shows a giant water bug larva attacking and killing a small fish. Click here for more information. The giant water bug Lethocerus patruelis is the largest European true bug and the largest European water insect. The adult bugs reach an impressive 8 cm in length, and the largest representatives of the same family are even bigger - up to almost 12 cm. A new article published in the open access journal Zookeys provides detailed information on karyotype and ...

Words and actions

2013-07-31
According to some neuroscientists the linguistic and the motor systems are strictly "tied up". That is to say, for instance, that to understand the word "drinking" our brain sets in motion the same cerebral structures used to perform the action of drinking. This assumption is connected to the theories of embodied cognition, according to which the nature of the human mind in the final analysis is modeled upon the body, its shape, the way it interacts with the world, and so on. Some studies, however, have called into question the dependence of the linguistic system on the ...

Ecosystem service mapping and modelling -- new special issue shows big steps forward

2013-07-31
Ecosystem services are a significant research and policy topic and there are many modelling and mapping approaches aimed at understanding the stocks, demands and flows of ecosystem goods and services on different scales. This Special Issue "Mapping and Modelling Ecosystem Services" of the journal Ecosystem Services is mainly an outcome of the "Quantifying, Mapping, Modelling and Indicators of Ecosystem Services" Workshop that was organized at the 4th Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) Conference entitled Ecosystem Services: Integrating Science and Policy in October 2011 ...

Chemists develop innovative nano-sensors for multiple proteins

2013-07-31
Chemists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a new method for parallel protein analysis that is, in principle, capable of identifying hundreds or even thousands of different proteins. It could be used to detect the presence of viruses and identify their type in tiny samples. At the same time, it is very cost-effective and quick. "We see possible applications of this technique in medicine, where it could be used, for example, for the rapid diagnosis of a wide range of diseases. It would be almost as easy to use as a pregnancy test strip," said Professor ...

Microfluidic breakthrough in biotechnology

2013-07-31
Chemical flasks and inconvenient chemostats for cultivation of bacteria are likely soon to be discarded. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw were first to construct a microfluidic system allowing for merging, transporting and splitting of microdroplets. Since now, hundreds of different bacteria cultures can be maintained simultaneously in a single system, which could speed up the research on restistance of bacteria to antibiotics. We could safely say that without chemical flask there would be no chemistry at ...

Computational biology: Cells reprogrammed on the computer

2013-07-31
This is the first paper based solely on theoretical, yet practically proven, results of computational biology to be published in this journal. (DOI: 10.1002/stem.1473). All cells of an organism originate from embryonic stem cells, which divide and increasingly differentiate as they do so. The ensuing tissue cells remain in a stable state; a skin cell does not spontaneously change into a nerve cell or heart muscle cell. "Yet the medical profession is greatly interested in such changes, nonetheless. They could yield new options for regenerative medicine," says Professor ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

A borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet

Balance between two competing nerve proteins deters symptoms of autism in mice

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

Awareness grows of cancer risk from alcohol consumption, survey finds

The experts that can outsmart optical illusions

Pregnancy may reduce long COVID risk

Scientists uncover novel immune mechanism in wheat tandem kinase

Three University of Virginia Engineering faculty elected as AAAS Fellows

Unintentional drug overdoses take a toll across the U.S. unequally, study finds

A step toward plant-based gelatin

ECMWF unveils groundbreaking ML tool for enhanced fire prediction

[Press-News.org] How do student characteristics predict university graduation odds?