The Narrow Miss: A Case Study of Fifth-Year Bachelor’s Degree Completion at One Private Residential College
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This single site case study investigated the phenomenon of narrowly missed on-time graduation (bachelor’s degree completion within four years rather than five) among first-time, full-time undergraduate students at one private residential college in the Northeastern United States. Lengthening time to an undergraduate degree is a national trend; the number of bachelor’s recipients who complete their studies “on time” has decreased in recent decades, and the average length of time it takes most students to graduate from four-year institutions has increased. Delayed college completion implies significant individual, institutional, and societal costs. Therefore, colleges and universities have an obligation to policymakers and other stakeholders to understand and address the various factors that promote and impede timely degree attainment and improve their four-year graduation rates. Most studies of time to degree have focused on public institutions, and on the student characteristics and behaviors that predict on-time versus delayed graduation. This study considered the phenomenon of delayed bachelor’s degree completion at an understudied institutional type: the private residential college. Because nearly a quarter of those who ultimately graduate with a bachelor’s degree complete within five years rather than four, the study focused on narrowly missed on-time completion. Recognizing the role of institutional context, the study focused not only on student characteristics and behaviors, but also the relationships between institutional policies and practices and time to degree. The study used multiple data sources, including organizational documents, quantitative analysis of student data, and interviews with employees and fifth-year completers to explain the forces related to delayed degree completion within this unique setting. Findings indicated that certain groups were more likely to complete their degrees in five years rather than four. These groups included males, older students, Pell-eligible students, and those who earned fewer AP credits in high school. The study found no relationship between elements of the financial aid package including grant aid, work study, and the presence of unmet financial need and time to degree. Perhaps most importantly, findings suggest a number of college-year experiences and behaviors that are related to time to degree, including having an undeclared major in the first semester freshman year, academic performance, and registration-related patterns including course repeats and course withdrawals. College and university administrators and policymakers will find the results of this study of interest in informing institutional policy and practice, and designing future time-to-degree studies within the private college context.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".