Letter to the Editor

The nola.com comment board is malfunctioning on one of their stories, so I'll utilize this woefully maintained blog to do what it is meant to do: spout my personal opinion which likely matters to no one but me and is perhaps read by even fewer people if I don't come back and review it myself.

This letter was written to the editor in today's paper:

LSU grad rate isn't great, either: A letter

Published: Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 4:59 AM

By Letters to the Editor
Follow

Share0

ShareEmailPrint

The recent bashing of two of our local universities for their low graduate rates, the University of New Orleans at 22 percent and Southern University at New Orleans at 5 percent, is like shooting fish in a barrel. It unfortunately deflects from the larger public higher education morass we find our state in.

Sure, UNO's rate is low -- but so is LSU's, our flagship university, which gets the best resources our state has to offer. According to Kiplinger's magazine, February 2011, LSU's four-year graduation rate is 28 percent. In Kiplinger's list of 100 other public universities, only eight have a lower graduation rate. Contrast LSU's four-year rate with other state flagship universities: University of Virginia, 85 percent; University of Florida, 58 percent; University of Texas, 52 percent; University of Georgia 51 percent; University of Alabama, 38 percent; University of Arkansas, 32 percent, and University of Tennessee, 31 percent.

Is it any wonder that our children leave the state for jobs, and businesses are hesitant to locate here? Of course UNO has to improve, but so does LSU and all of our public education. It seems that we Louisianians haven't yet figured out that a really excellent educational system is the best long-term economic engine for our state.

No surprise there. Only 28 percent of us can graduate from our flagship in four years.

Malcolm Villarrubia Jr.
Metairie

My response:

While the 4 year graduation rate for LSU was 26% in 2004 (the most recent date for which UNO also supplied numbers), the 6 year graduation rate at LSU was 60% that year. Compare that to UNO's 2004 six year graduation rate: 20%. This is not to berate UNO as an institution, I am against the merger and I believe UNO performs an invaluable service to the city's residents, but I was also taken aback by the misleading statistics you are using in your letter concerning LSU's effectiveness as an institution of higher learning.

Unsupported by statistics is my other contention: if you were take the students who return to LSU for their sophomore year (83%), the graduation rate for 4 years would be appreciably higher, as I'm sure UNO's (66% returning for sophomore year pre-Katrina) numbers would likewise be higher.

Citations are from self-reporting of LSU and UNO respectively:

http://irdm.uno.edu/outcomes/

http://www.bgtplan.lsu.edu/TREND/students/enrollment/acttracking.pdf