Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • I’m here at Georgia State.

  • It’s a university that’s really taken seriously the idea of finding out why some

  • of the kids don’t complete college and really helping them along that progression

  • and theyve had some amazing results.

  • Ten years ago, Georgia State had a graduation rate of about 30 percent.

  • The U.S. has the highest college dropout rate.

  • Were number 1 in terms of the number of people who start college,

  • but were like number 20 in terms of the number of people who finish college.

  • Over the last 10 years, weve been able to get our graduation rate up to 53, 54 percent

  • which is the highest increase over that time period of any institution in the country.

  • As significantly, there’s no achievement gap here at Georgia State.

  • The African-American students, the Latino students, the white students, all graduate

  • at about the same rate.

  • Theyre leading the way.

  • I wish other colleges would do some of the same.

  • We spend a lot of time really thinking about at-risk students.

  • Two-thirds of our students are coming from low income families.

  • They face special challenges in terms of being admitted, financial aid, and academic challenges.

  • You really have to negotiate all these things successfully in order to get to college,

  • in order to stay in college, and then in order to graduate from college.

  • Georgia State they take some of the students who they think are most at risk

  • and have them come in the summer.

  • They immediately get immersed in a social group.

  • They start to get credits, and get some positive reinforcement.

  • They engage kids in what they call a meta-major early on, picking a general area

  • and making sure your courses are largely on track for whatever your choice might be

  • so that you don’t waste credits.

  • That’s very important.

  • The heart of what we do is looking at the data.

  • We use predictive analytics to identify the factors that take students off the academic path.

  • When a student does something that suggests that theyre going to go off path, an alert

  • goes off, and somebody can reach out to them to help them get on the right path.

  • They did have to invest in more advisors and training those advisors to work with these

  • systems so it wasn’t like a software substitution effect.

  • It led to more advising sessions.

  • But the incentives were there for both the students and the school to really analyze

  • what’s off track and solve it as soon as possible.

  • Hearing the students I met with, how they got enough help to overcome those things

  • that’s always inspiring.

I’m here at Georgia State.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it