Freshman Retention Rates at the Universities

On May 26, 1994, the Arizona Daily Star reported "After years of talk, the state universities are making themselves accountable on the issue of improving undergraduate education by setting public goals and a timetable to meet them. ‘What this will do is make public both what our intent is and what our progress is on this issue,’ said University of Arizona President Manuel Pacheco."

In July 1995 Arizona Board of Regents announced their objectives for 1995-96. Their first objective was the improvement of undergraduate education.

A key objective measurement of quality of undergraduate education, used by U.S. News & World Report in their yearly evaluation of universities and colleges, is the retention rate of freshmen.

In the figure to the right, we show the retention rates of freshman at the three Arizona universities during the years 90-91 to 99-00 and the retention rates of freshman at two comparable peer institutions for each of the universities. The peer institutions illustrated are from among the peer institutions for each university approved by the Arizona Board of Regents. The institutions shown for comparison in each panel have a population of students of similar quality to the compared Arizona institution. For all of the comparison institutions, between 18 to 39 percent of their freshman students were in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

In the table below we also show retention rates of the Arizona universities compared to all of their peer institutions for the most recent year. The Arizona universities are near the bottom of each list in terms of retaining freshman students.

In the Figure, we can see that there has been no significant improvement at the UA in freshman retention rates for at least 9 years. ASU, starting from a lower level, has shown two years of clear improvement. NAU has not shown a clear trend.

In June of 1996, in evaluating undergraduate education at the universities, Regent Rudy Campbell said. "I also understand the problems we are working on took decades to develop. It will take us some time to fix them."

At the rate the UA is progressing, it may take decades to catch up to its better peer institutions.