{"id":20540,"date":"2024-02-15T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T00:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20540"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T13:45:09","slug":"the-relationship-between-8-year-graduation-rates-and-economic-status-race-ethnicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2024\/02\/15\/the-relationship-between-8-year-graduation-rates-and-economic-status-race-ethnicity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Relationship Between 8-Year Graduation Rates and Economic Status\/Race\/Ethnicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In our previous blog post<\/a>, we introduced the\u00a0IPEDS Outcome Measures<\/a>, which extends graduation rate calculations out to 8 years while also including part-time and transfer students in the metrics. Across public universities in Texas, we saw that 57% of full-time, first-time entering students in the 2014 cohort completed their bachelor’s degree at their originating university within 6 years. That percentage increased to 59% when extending the timeframe to 8 years<\/b>.\u00a0In viewing the data in the previous post, it was apparent that several campuses saw larger increases in graduation rates when moving from 6-year to 8-year timeframes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

For this new analysis, we reviewed the association between several variables (demographic, admissions, financial) and the outcome variable, which we defined as the percentage point increase from the 6-year to the 8-year graduation rates. We used the 2014 cohort data, which is the most recent year where 8-year graduation rates are available in the IPEDS data. I<\/span>n the 2014 FTIC<\/span>\u00a0cohort, t<\/span>wo variables were more positively associated with the outcome variable: the percentage of Hispanic students in the incoming cohort, and the percentage of these students with family incomes below $30,000.<\/span><\/p>

Percentage of Hispanic Students<\/u><\/b><\/span>:\u00a0<\/span>The first visualization below shows a strong correlation between Hispanic student enrollment and increases in graduation rates from 6- to 8-year metrics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>