One consequence of the work of the Task Force on Student Success was the development and pilot implementation of the “Retention and Graduation Review” in fall 2012 and spring 2013 and the provision of templates for institutional use in reporting on all the students in an institution. This review process used a stand-alone Retention and Graduation Committee (RGC) to evaluate the student retention and graduation rates of cohorts of students within prescribed periods of time. Sixteen institutions within the WSCUC region participated in the pilot.

The Retention and Graduation Committee completed a set of pilot reviews from both fall 2012 and spring 2013. Pilot institutions used standardized templates to present retention and graduation data and included a brief narrative to contextualize their information, and also provided the Commission with valuable feedback about the process. The staff and Commission are currently reviewing the experience from these reviews to see how the review process might be better connected to the Institutional Review Process (IRP). 

While these reviews included all of an institution’s students, pilot institutions found that data production was time-consuming and burdensome. RGC members found that, without appropriate parameters, it was difficult to make fair judgments about the data collected. And the WSCUC Commission concluded that limiting results to prescribed time periods failed to include a significant number of student completions. The Commission does not plan to continue with this process with the rest of the region.

For further information on the evaluation of student success please review:

About the Graduation Rate Dashboard

2013 Handbook of Accreditation- Section 5: Student Success: Student Learning, Retention, and Graduation