Fewer than 1 in 5 freshmen at the University of Hawaii’s flagship Manoa campus earn a degree within four years — a rate that lags far behind the national average and which has prompted school officials to experiment with ways to boost students’ progress.
School officials point to various factors behind Manoa’s 19 percent four-year graduation rate, including a high number of working students, students who change or add majors, course availability and affordability.
"It’s a hard thing to generalize, but there’s no question we ought to and need to be above the national average," said UH-Manoa Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Reed Dasenbrock.
Under federal reporting guidelines, the rate reflects only full-time students who enroll at Manoa as freshmen. The campus enrolled more than 14,200 undergraduate students last fall.
Nationally, close to 39 percent of full-time, degree-seeking students finish school within four years on average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education.
Hawaii’s four-year graduation rate was 38th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in a report ranking state universities released last month by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
"The easiest way to increase our rate would be to only accept students who are likely to graduate on time," Dasenbrock said. "But we want to do this the hard way, and that is a challenge. We’re embracing that challenge because we believe it’s our kuleana to educate the entire population of the state."
In the short term, UH-Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple said he wants to see the school’s rate doubled.
In touting the more than $250 million in federal research funds that Manoa attracts annually — ranking among top research schools such as Cornell and the University of California, Berkeley — Apple acknowledged his campus lags in student academic success.
"The other side of the coin is that we don’t have the student academic success of those universities," Apple told the UH Board of Regents at a May 16 meeting. "That’s job (No. 1) now — to really make sure that our students succeed in terms of students graduating in either four or six years, and graduating and being successful post-graduation."
Manoa’s four-year graduation rate has averaged 18 percent the past five years.
"There’s no way to sugarcoat that — that is awful — and I really believe we can double that in literally five years," Apple told the regents. "We’re not too bad in the six-year rate, but our four-year rate is very poor."
(The percentage of undergraduate students completing degrees in six years at Manoa is close to 57 percent, about 2 percentage points below the national average.)
Dasenbrock said in the three years he has been on the job, his office has been experimenting with about 10 different ways to boost Manoa’s four-year graduation rate. The strategies range from increasing the availability of classes, automatically signing up incoming freshmen for 15 credits (typically five courses), helping students declare a major more quickly, and providing more need-based financial aid.
"Not all are going to work," Dasenbrock said. "We’re experimenting and we’ll have to see. If something works, we’ll need to put more money at it and scale it."
For one, he said, Manoa has made significant improvements in the availability of courses for undergraduates.
In 2009, when hundreds of classes were halted amid the economic recession and budget restrictions, the campus logged 30,000 unsuccessful course registrations in a single semester.
"That means the typical student couldn’t get into 1 1⁄2 classes on average," Dasenbrock said. "That number has been cut to 4,000 over three years."
The head of UH-Manoa’s student government said lobbying for more classes will be a top priority in the upcoming fall semester.
"The general feel from students is that it’s taking them five and sometimes six years to graduate when it should be taking only four years," said Richard Mizusawa, president of the Associated Students of the University of Hawaii. "One of the challenges is class availability and also just not knowing what their degree requirements are."
Mizusawa — a senior who is on track to complete double majors in communications and communicology and a minor in business — said he’s finalizing a one-on-one meeting with Apple over the summer to discuss strategies.
"Class availability will be one of my biggest topics in working with Chancellor Apple in increasing the quantity of classes offered so that students can enroll in 15 credits a semester," he said.
A typical bachelor’s degree program requires a minimum of 120 credits, or an average of 15 credits each during fall and spring semesters to finish in four years.
Apple said by signing up freshmen automatically, close to 70 percent of students are taking on a course load of 15 credits a semester — double the number of students from a year and a half ago.
Dasenbrock said another initiative has been an electronic student audit system that customizes degree paths to help students finish in four years by laying out which courses to take each semester.
Another strategy involves getting students to declare a major as early as possible. Students who are undecided or who change majors typically end up taking longer to graduate because they need additional courses to meet different degree requirements.
Dasenbrock said the school is looking at creating about a half-dozen broad-interest categories around the 92 majors offered at Manoa.
"Possibly starting in fall 2014, when a student registers, they will have to at least pick a broad interest area rather than having the option of being undeclared," he said. "We’re still deciding on the categories — perhaps health care, arts, education. Then we can set them up with academic advisers and try to hone down this population."
Mizusawa said rising tuition is another obstacle for some students to finish in four years.
"Even for students who are lucky to have family support, it’s still a headache to deal with increased tuition," he said, "especially if you’re pushing students to take 15 credits."
Dasenbrock said Manoa is looking to increase its financial aid that comes out of tuition revenues as well as raise more funds for private scholarships. Of the $160 million the campus collects in tuition, about $33 million is provided in need-based financial aid to students, Apple said.
As the school works to boost its graduation rate, Dasenbrock said it’s important to also concentrate on increasing the overall number of degrees earned.
"Because the graduation rate only counts full-time entering freshmen, it discounts transfers from the community colleges and part-time students," he said. "In the end, we need to get more students with degrees."
At the UH system level, a goal has been set to award about 10,500 degrees and certificates across the 10-campus system in 2015. Last year, UH awarded more than 9,600 degrees and certificates, up 7 percent from the year before.
