Ariel - my doctoral dissertation was about how to measure retention at an online university and I’ve published several articles as well. The most successful students matriculating at an online university are those that transfer credit. Years ago, APUS and UMGC contributed to a study of successful students for the Department of Defense’s DANTES organization. I believe the conclusion was that because of the number of students able to “test drive” online programs, retention should be measured after a student completed 15 credit hours at an institution. Many of those early dropouts were “swirling” students. Getting them to complete a full semester (15 credit hours) even when they were part-time was an indicator of their seriousness. Both UMGC and APUS used to publish their completion rates using those parameters. Naturally, they are much higher when you eliminate the “one and done’s, the swirlers, etc.” At the same time, it’s a way for institutions interested in improving persistence and completion to track the progress as well as intervene when appropriate to improve outcomes for students.
I'm going to explore this further. When writing this, I was looking for more evidence of retention rates for students taking three courses, with limited success.
Thank you for the comment, and I'm definitely going to read your paper this afternoon.
Regarding APUS, in the document, its vague in the text and I will do a correction and/or revision. I meant to say that of the online schools in the table in the article, none of them had greater than 50%. I can see how someone might think I was referring to ALL of the top online universities, which wasn't my intent.
I was referring to completion rather than graduation rate. I see that APUS has a 52, 60, and 62% completion rate for four, six, and eight years. That's very impressive.
You’ve likely seen this, but an interesting attempt at an internal alternative to Sophia that’s actually a better financial option even if you transfer them to a different institution:
Thanks for pointing this out. You were the one who pointed me out to it. I thought about including it. I’m thinking about writing about WGU, because its such a fascinating institution. Very innovative.
What are your other thoughts on the article? Am I thinking about this the right way? Will online institutions become finishing schools?
Ariel - my doctoral dissertation was about how to measure retention at an online university and I’ve published several articles as well. The most successful students matriculating at an online university are those that transfer credit. Years ago, APUS and UMGC contributed to a study of successful students for the Department of Defense’s DANTES organization. I believe the conclusion was that because of the number of students able to “test drive” online programs, retention should be measured after a student completed 15 credit hours at an institution. Many of those early dropouts were “swirling” students. Getting them to complete a full semester (15 credit hours) even when they were part-time was an indicator of their seriousness. Both UMGC and APUS used to publish their completion rates using those parameters. Naturally, they are much higher when you eliminate the “one and done’s, the swirlers, etc.” At the same time, it’s a way for institutions interested in improving persistence and completion to track the progress as well as intervene when appropriate to improve outcomes for students.
Do you have a link to your dissertation? I can't find it online.
This article provides a quick overview of some of my dissertation findings (versus reading the entire document). https://wallyboston.com/online-student-retention/
Thank you for the note. I did a web search on this, and Google led me to your write-up on your website. https://wallyboston.com/educational-attainment-tracking-the-academic-success-of-servicemembers-and-veterans/
I'm going to explore this further. When writing this, I was looking for more evidence of retention rates for students taking three courses, with limited success.
Here's a link to a blog post about the paper we presented about student swirling - it's dated but provides some interesting stats. https://wallyboston.com/exploring-institution-to-institution-student-swirling-patterns/
I'll send you a pdf of my dissertation. I believe it is posted on my academia.edu profile. What's your best email? By the way, you mentioned there are only two institutions with grad rates over 50%. I believe APUS's is over 50% - https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=american+public+university&s=all&id=449339#retgrad
Thank you for the comment, and I'm definitely going to read your paper this afternoon.
Regarding APUS, in the document, its vague in the text and I will do a correction and/or revision. I meant to say that of the online schools in the table in the article, none of them had greater than 50%. I can see how someone might think I was referring to ALL of the top online universities, which wasn't my intent.
I was referring to completion rather than graduation rate. I see that APUS has a 52, 60, and 62% completion rate for four, six, and eight years. That's very impressive.
This is a link to the white paper that APUS and UMGC collaborated - https://assets.system.tamus.edu/files/veterans/pdf/symposium-presentations/soc-educational-attainment-final.pdf
You’ve likely seen this, but an interesting attempt at an internal alternative to Sophia that’s actually a better financial option even if you transfer them to a different institution:
https://www.wgu.edu/single-courses.html
Thanks for pointing this out. You were the one who pointed me out to it. I thought about including it. I’m thinking about writing about WGU, because its such a fascinating institution. Very innovative.
What are your other thoughts on the article? Am I thinking about this the right way? Will online institutions become finishing schools?