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This report documents the dramatic variation in graduation rates across more than 1,300 of the nation's colleges and universities, even between those with similar admissions criteria and students. Using official [United States] Department of Education graduation rates, this report identifies the top and bottom performers among institutions that have similar levels of admissions selectivity, as reported in the widely used 'Barron's Profiles of American Colleges'. Though completion rates increase as one moves up the selectivity scale, we show that within each category of selectivity, there are large differences between the schools that graduate most students and those that graduate few. While student motivation, intent, and ability matter greatly when it comes to college completion, our analysis suggests that the practices of higher education institutions matter, too.

The institutions covered in this report run the gamut from large, public research universities to small, private liberal arts colleges; from highly selective, world-famous institutions to regional, open admissions ones. America's college graduation rate crisis is not happening at the handful of institutions that admit only a few of their applicants and graduate most - it is happening at a large swath of institutions that admit many but graduate few.

We do not argue that high graduation rates are invariably a good sign or low graduation rates necessarily a bad one. After all, an easy way to pad graduation rates is to drop standards and hand a diploma to every student who walks through the door. And we do not want to suggest that modest differences in graduation rates should be overemphasized - that is why we focus on the extremes.

However, graduation rates as calculated here do convey important information - information that should be readily available to students selecting a school, parents investing in their child's education, and policymakers and taxpayers who finance student aid and public institutions. We believe that the graduation rate measure included here should be just the beginning of a deeper inquiry into college success - one driven by more accurate measures broadly defined: in future earnings, in acquiring knowledge, in workplace success, and ultimately in becoming the kind of citizens who can contribute to the stability and prosperity of our society.

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The current pace of degree completion is not sufficient to get us to our national goal. We must find ways to accelerate college completion. Graduation rates are one valuable measure of how quickly our students are attaining degrees, and disaggregating graduation rates of students within and among similar institutions can inform both institutional efforts and broader public policy. Knowing where students enroll and, in turn, what institutions are doing to retain and graduate them are important components to increasing college completion. This report acknowledges the reality that our success as a nation in meeting our college completion goals will be determined by how well we serve our Hispanic population. The authors document the fact that the status quo will not get us there: though some institutions do an excellent job of helping their Hispanic students earn a degree, many more fail to keep pace. The report offers policy recommendations at both the national and institutional levels that can improve college completion, but, equally important, the authors raise awareness of the need to better understand and serve Hispanic students in higher education. And serving the Hispanic population in higher education means more than just enrolling them in colleges and universities - serving students well also requires improving the chances that they complete a degree.

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As the nation struggles to find new ways to increase college access and completion rates while lowering costs, a handful of 'next generation universities' are embracing key strategies that make them models for national reform. [This] comes at a time when too many public universities are failing to respond to the nation's higher education crisis. Rather than expanding enrollment and focusing limited dollars on the neediest of students, many institutions are instead restricting enrollments and encouraging the use of student-aid dollars on merit awards. But, according to the report, some schools are breaking the mold by boldly restructuring operating costs and creating clear, accelerated pathways for students. The report focuses on six public research universities: Arizona State University, University at Buffalo, University of California at Riverside, University of Central Florida, Georgia State University, and the University of Texas at Arlington. These universities are continuing their commitment to world class research while increasing enrollment and graduation rates, even as the investments from their states have declined.

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