Did you know that public universities across the U.S. are reporting that fewer than half of their full-time freshmen in 2007 earned bachelor’s degrees after six years at their original schools or after transferring to other schools?

This information reveals these students have wasted a significant amount of money and effort without getting a degree, but it also paints a clearer picture of what types of challenges many schools face.

This data comes from Student Achievement Measure (SAM), a nongovernmental Website that reports data on students enrolled into a reported institution, the percentage that graduated from that institution, the percentage that transferred to another institution and the percentage of students whose current status is unknown.

Although the federal government records graduation rates based on first-time, full-time students who finish from the school where they began, colleges are turning to SAM to fill in the missing data.

With this information, institutions are attempting to reform to keep their students at their schools.

“We’d really, really like to see more students stay here and graduate from here,” Luke Schultheis, vice provost for strategic enrollment management at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Washington Post. 

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