Retention and Graduation Report: Transfer Cohorts University of Tennessee, Knoxville December 2016 Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Table of Contents I. List of Figures II. List of Tables III. Trends in Transfer Retention and Graduation IV. Appendix: Tables i UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
I. List of Figures 1. The undergraduate full-time transfer (FTT) student retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) by gender, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 2. The number of FTT students in each transfer cohort (Fall 2007-2015) who graduate in year 1-8. 3. The retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT by gender, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 4. The retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT by Tennessee residence status, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015 5. The continuation rates (percent) for second, third, and fourth fall for undergraduate FTT students by entering class level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 6. The 2-6 year cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by entering class level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2014. 7. Comparison of retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate Full-time Transfer (FTT) freshman with First-time Full-time freshman (FTFT), Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 8. Comparison of Male and Female FTFT and FTT freshman retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent), Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 9. FTT students second fall continuation rate (percent) by race and ethnicity, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 10. The two-six year cumulative graduation rate (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by race and ethnicity, Fall Cohorts 2007-2014. 11. Comparison of retention and graduation rates (percent) for FTT students and FTT URM students, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 12. Comparison of continuation to second fall (percent) for FTT URM males and females, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 13. The comparison of FTT URM males and females continuation to second fall rates (percent) for, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. ii UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
II. Appendix: Tables 1. The initial number of students in full-time Transfer (FTT) cohorts overall, by gender, Tennessee resident status, initial class level, race/ethnicity/minority status, ACT equivalent scores and core high school grade point average, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 2. The number of graduates per year and cumulative graduation numbers for undergraduate Full-time transfer students (FTT). Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 3. Undergraduate Full-time Transfer (FTT) students retention and graduation rates (percent) by overall FTT students and FTT students by gender, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 4. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by Tennessee residence status, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 5. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by initial class level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 6. Comparison of retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for First-time Full-time (FTFT) freshman with undergraduate Full-time transfer (FTT) students. 7. Comparison of Male and Female FTFT and FTT freshman retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent), Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 8. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate Full-time transfer (FTT) students by race/ethnicity and minority status, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 9. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate URM FTT females and males students, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 10. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by Core GPA Scores, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 11. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by ACT Equivalent scores, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 12. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by gender within class level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 13. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by gender within race/ethnicity, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. iii UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
14. Initial number of students in part-time transfer (PTT) cohorts overall, by gender, Tennessee resident status, initial class level, race/ethnicity/minority status, ACT equivalent scores and core high school grade point average, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 15. Retention and graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate Part-time transfer (PTT) students, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. iv UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Introduction Retention and graduation rates are two metrics used to assess the success of students. Students are followed from the day they first enroll to the completion of their first degree. At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), students are followed each fall of their undergraduate study. The student s cohort (group of students classified by certain distinguishing characteristics) is comprised of all students entering the university of Tennessee for the first time as a transfer student. The first fall is the initial cohort and every subsequent fall after that a student either continues with his/her studies (retained), has graduated, or stops out / drops out. Students who attend the summer prior and are enrolled full-time in the fall are included in these Fall Cohorts. At the University of Tennessee most undergraduate transfer students are Full-time (1170 students on average for the past nine years) with 12 or more credit hours (Appendix: Table 1). Part-time transfer (PTT) students have an average of 122 people in a cohort with 84 students as a minimum and 162 students as a maximum (Appendix: Table 14). In this report we will mainly focus our discussion on Full-time students, and only report the breakdown of observations and the overall retention and graduation for Part-time students (Appendix: Table 14 and Table 15). For this report, we provide analyses of the full-time Transfer (FTT) cohorts overall, by gender, Tennessee resident status, class level upon admittance, comparison with First-time Full-time (FTFT) Freshman, race/ethnicity, and minority status, for cohorts 2007 to 2015. This report emphasizes the rates of undergraduate FTT cohorts returning to the second year and the FTT students who graduate between two to six years. Overall trends in Retention and Graduation Second fall continuation rates increased for the 2007 to 2012 FTT Fall Cohorts from 76.3 to 81.0 percent, dropped to 75.3 percent in the 2013 cohort, increased to 78.7 percent in 2014 cohort and decreased to 74.8 percent in 2015 (Figure 1). Fall continuation rates average across cohort years for their second through fifth fall at 78.1, 58.7, 25.7, and 7.0 percent, respectively (Appendix: Table 3). 1 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 1. The undergraduate FTT student retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) by gender, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Retention and Graduation in Bold represented in graph. Cumulative three-year graduation rates have steadily increased for the 2008 through the 2012 fall cohorts but sharply dropped for the 2013 fall cohort (Figure 1). The average cumulative graduation rates across cohorts from the second fall to the fifth fall are 14.5, 44.3, 62.5, 66.3, and 67.2 percent, respectively (Figure 1). Five-year and six-year cumulative graduation rates are very similar to each other across cohorts with average rates at 66.3 and 67.2 percent respectively. (Figure 1., Appendix: Table 3.) 2 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 2. The number of FTT students in each transfer cohort (fall 2007-2015) who graduate in year 1-8. More FTT students graduate in the third year with an average of 45.2 percent of all graduates for Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. (Figure 2). 3 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Gender Figure 3. The retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate FTT by gender, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Male FTT students represent 52.7 percent of the fall 2007-2015 cohorts while females only represent 47.3 percent of the fall cohorts. Males average (across cohort years) a slightly better rate (78.9%) of completing the first year and re-enrolling in the fall of the second year than females (77.1 %) (Figure 3, Appendix: Table 3). Women have a much better average (across cohort years) cumulative three-year graduation rate at 49.6 percent while males only have 39.7 percent graduation rate (Figure 3, Appendix: Table 3). The average (across cohort years) cumulative four-year graduation rate for females is 65.4 percent and for males is 59.9 percent (Figure 3, Appendix: Table 3). 4 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Cumulative 5-year (average across cohort years) graduation rates are closer with males at 65.1 percent and females at 67.6 percent (Appendix: Table 3). In-State/Out-of-State Students In-State students are United States citizens or permanent residents who list Tennessee as their permanent address. The Out-of-State classification includes all other students. The average number of observations across cohort years is much lower for Out-of-State FTT students (168) than In-State FTT students (1002) (Appendix: Table 1). Across cohort years, In-State FTT students have a much higher percentage for the second fall continuation than Out-of-State FTT students do, at 79.0 and 72.6 percent, respectively (Figure 4, Appendix: Table 4). The trend for In-State FTT students for six-year cumulative graduation is slightly increasing while the Out-of-State trend is more variable (Figure 4). Average (across cohorts) six-year cumulative graduation rates for In-state students are 68.4 percent while Out-of-state is only 60.2 percent (Figure 4, Appendix: Table 4). 5 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Initial Class Level Incoming undergraduate Full-time transfer students can be classified as freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors. At UTK, there are more starting sophomore FTT students than any other level (Appendix: Table 5). Most transfer students come in as sophomores with an average of 508 sophomores per cohort between 2007 and 2015 (Appendix: Table 5). Transfer students coming in as juniors perform the best in both second fall continuation and in three, four, five, six-year cumulative graduation rates. Juniors have an average (across cohort years) cumulative three through six-year graduation percentages at 64.1, 72.4, 74.4 and 75.5 percent, respectively (Figure 5, Appendix: Table 5). Across the years, FTT students who transfer in as a senior have a slightly higher average two-year cumulative graduation rate than students who transfer in as a junior, at 33.9 and 31.0 percent, respectively. Students transferring in as seniors have the lowest second fall continuation rate at 63.9 percent (Figure 5, Appendix: Table 5). Students who transfer in as freshman have lower 2-5 year graduation rates than students who transfer in as sophomore, junior or senior. Freshman and sophomore FTT students continue to the third fall at higher average rates (across cohort years), at 67.8 and 66.3 percent, respectively. Juniors and seniors trail at 46.9 and 34.3 percent respectively. 6 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 5. The continuation rates (percent) for second, third, and fourth fall for undergraduate FTT students by entering class level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. 7 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 6. Undergraduate FTT students 2-6 year cumulative graduation rates (percent) by entering student level, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. *Number of average observations in a cohort year are in parenthesis. 8 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Comparison of FTFT freshman versus FTT freshman Figure 7. Comparison of retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent) for undergraduate Full-time Transfer (FTT) freshman with First-time Full-time freshman (FTFT), Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Across cohort years, there are an average of 235 FTT freshmen and 4272 FTFT freshmen. A comparison of trend lines for the respective 2007 through 2015 cohorts shows that the First-time Full-time (FTFT) freshmen second fall continuation rate fluctuates very little around 85 percent. In contrast, the FTT freshmen trend line is variable. Fall cohorts 2007-2011 show as steady increase (71.7 to 81.0 percent), a precipitous decrease from 2011 to 2013 ending at 70.1 percent, a rebound in 2014 at 76.0 percent and a decrease in 2015 to 69.9 percent (Figure 7, Appendix Table 6). FTFT freshman students have a higher average (across cohort years) cumulative six-year graduation rate than FTT freshmen. The trend for the FTFT freshman group is slightly increasing with a drop off in 2010 while the FTT freshman increases from 56.6 percent in 2007 to 65.5 percent in 2008 and then drops off in 2009 to 62.1 percent and again in 2010 to 60.2 percent (Figure 7). 9 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
For FTFT freshman males, the average (across cohort years) cumulative six-year graduation rate is 65.9, while female s average 72.1 percent, a 6.2 percent difference between sexes. However, the difference between the males and females of the FTT freshmen is only 1.7 percent (Figure 8, Appendix: Table 7). Female freshman transfer students tend to have higher four-year graduation rates then FTFT freshman females. FTFT freshman females have an average (across cohort years) cumulative four-year rate of 51.2 percent, which is 4.8 percent less than that of FTT females (56 percent) (Appendix: Table 7). FTT freshman males have similar four-year graduation rates in comparison to FTFT freshman males from 2007-2010. In 2011 and 2012, the differences increase with FTFT freshman males perform better then FTT males (Figure 8, Appendix: Table 7). FTT freshman females have an 8.2 percent higher average (across cohort years) four-year cumulative graduation rate than male freshman FTT students. The six-year rate is closer within gender with females only having a 1.7 percent higher rate than males. (Figure 8, Appendix: Table 7). 10 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 8. Comparison of Male and Female FTFT freshman and FTT freshman retention and cumulative graduation rates (percent), fall cohorts 2007-2015. 11 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Ethnicity and Race The University of Tennessee uses the Federal definition for race/ethnicity, which separates out non-citizens into a Non-Resident Alien group. A separation of U.S. citizens into two broad categories of Hispanic or Non-Hispanic occurs. Then the Non-Hispanics are broken down into individual races. The overall reporting groups are Non-Resident Alien, Hispanic of Any Race, Black or African American, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, White, Two or More Races and unknown. Of these reporting groups, we will focus on Hispanics of any race, Non-Hispanic Black or African Americans, Asian or Pacific Islander and Whites. The others are difficult to show graphically due to sample size (American Indian/ Alaska Native), the period they were available (Two or more races), not comparable to other categories (Non-Resident Alien) or unknown ethnicity or race (Unknown). The numbers for the groups excluded from the graph are located in Table 5 of the Appendix. Figure 9. FTT students second fall continuation rate (percent) by race and ethnicity, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Refer to appendix for unknown and other races not represented by graph, Appendix: Table 5 Number in parenthesis is average number of students across cohort years. 12 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
The average number of observations for each race/ethnicity across cohorts is less than 60, with the exception of Whites, which has an average of 978 FTT students across cohort years (Appendix: Table 8). Asian or Pacific Islanders had the highest average (across cohort years) second fall continuation rate at 81.8 percent, followed by Hispanics at 80.2, Whites at 78.5, Black or African Americans at 69.1 percent. Hispanics of any race have the highest second fall continuation rates for the 2007, 2009, and 2013 cohorts (Figure 9, Appendix: Table 8). FTT Hispanic students have the largest average (across cohort years) increase in graduation between the second and third year (30.7 percent). Whites had the second highest increase between the second and third year with 30.2 percent (Figure 10, Appendix: Table 8). FTT Hispanics have the highest average (across cohort years) six-year cumulative graduation rate at 75.6 percent; followed by Asian and Pacific Islanders at 72.7 percent, Whites 67.8 percent and Black or African Americans at 51.2 percent. FTT Hispanics also have the highest average (across cohort years) four and five-year cumulative graduation rate (Figure 10, Appendix: Table 8). Whites and Hispanics tie for the highest average (across cohort years) cumulative twoyear graduation rate at 14.7 percent. The highest three-year average cumulative graduation rate (across cohort years) is 45.4 percent for Hispanics followed by White FTT transfer students at 44.9 percent (Figure 10, Appendix: Table 8). 13 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 10. The 2-6-year cumulative graduation rate (percent) for undergraduate FTT students by race and ethnicity, Fall Cohorts 2007-2014. The number in parenthesis means the average observations across cohort years. Two or more races only started in 2009 so not included. Unknown and Non-Resident Alien not included. American Indian or Alaska Natives only have on average four people across all cohort years so not included. 14 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Under-Represented Minorities (URM) Under-Represented Minorities (URM) includes Black or African Americans, Hispanics of any race, Two or More Races and American Indian/Alaska Natives. Figure 11. Comparison of retention and graduation rates (percent) for FTT students and FTT URM students, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Across cohort years the Under-Represented Minority Full-time transfers (URM FTT) cohorts averaged 121 people a year and while the overall Full-time transfer (FTT) students averaged 1170 people across cohort years (Appendix: Table 8). Noting the discrepancy in observations between the URM FTT and overall FTT cohorts, FTT s have a higher second fall continuation rate than URM FTT s except in 2013 where the URM FTT s are slightly better than the FTT s (Figure 11, Table 8). Students graduate within three, four, and five-years at higher rates in the general Full-time transfer population than they do in the FTT URM population. In 2008, the three-year rate for FTT s and URM FTT s was closer, with FTT s at 40.0 percent and URM FTT s at 39.3 15 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
percent. The four-year cumulative graduation rate for cohort years 2007-2012 have at least a 4 percent difference between FTT students and URM FTT students. Figure 12. Comparison of continuation to second fall (percent) for FTT URM males and females, Fall Cohorts 2007-2015. Across cohort years, there is an average of 63 males and 57 females FTT URM students. However, there is considerable difference in number of males and females on a yearly basis (Appendix: Table 9). Overall, female FTT URM students continue to the second fall at a higher average (across cohort years) percentage of 74.4 percent while males have an average of 71.5 percent (Appendix Table 9). FTT URM males have higher second fall continuation rates in the 2012, 2014 and 2015 cohorts at 84.7, 82.8 and 72.4 percent, respectively, while females in the 2012, 2014, and 2015 cohort are at 60.9, 74.0 and 65.1 percent, respectively (Figure 12). 16 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
Figure 13. FTT URM males and females three, four and six-year cumulative graduation rates (percent), Fall 2007-2013. FTT URM Females have better average cumulative 2-6 year graduation rates across years than males; however, males do better in three, four, and six-year cumulative graduation in the 2008 cohort than females. In the 2012 cohort males do better than females in the fouryear rate (Figure 13, Appendix: Table 9). 17 UTK Office of Institutional Research and Assessment