Commanding English Tracking Study Update

Final Report

7-7-00

            This report is a follow-up to a previous Commanding English tracking study (delMas & Murie, 1997) which examined outcomes, as of the 1996-1997 academic year, for CE cohorts from 1989 to 1995   In this report, Commanding English cohorts from 1989 to 1997 were tracked in the University of Minnesota's Student Registration Reporting data base to determine their outcomes as of the 1999/2000 academic year.  Data were gathered to examine student persistence, transfer, and undergraduate degree attainment.  The outcomes for CE students were compared against outcomes for the entire General College Fall cohort population from 1991 to 1997.  In the previous report, CE outcomes were rather impressive, especially for retention and transfer:  Outcomes remain impressive today.  CE students are retained at a higher rate than are non-CE GC students, and they show much higher rates of transfer.  While in GC, CE students tend to achieve a higher grade point average than non-CE students, but like GC non-CE students, CE students do experience a drop in grade point average after transfer out of GC to another university program.  CE students' post transfer college performance (GPA and graduation rates) tends to be comparable to that for non-CE students.  Finally, CE students tend to be drawn to different transfer programs than their non-CE GC counterparts: CE students are somewhat less likely to pursue CLA and education programs, and somewhat more likely to end up in Technology or Management programs.  CE students are more likely to use CLA as a pass-through to other programs: their rate of transfer from CLA to another unit is about 1.7 times the rate for non-CE students.   The impact of new CLA policy to prevent "pass-through" behaviors may be felt more strongly by CE students- this impact would be interesting to assess in the future, and should be something to attend to in advising current CE students.

            Retention

The bold-face entries in the tables below reflect the scope of data that were included in the last report.  Some of the numbers in Table 1 might be slightly different than those in the prior report due to the fact that historical data records are not necessarily stable.  Commanding English students still show very high retention rates, indeed, they are higher than those for GC cohorts as a whole as is evident in the comparisons illustrated in Chart 1.

 Table 1- Retention Figures

Chart 1 - students were considered retained here if they were enrolled in or had a degree posting by the subsequent fall term (fall term 1 year later for 2^nd year retention, and fall term 4 years later for 5^th year retention)

            Transfer and Graduation

Table 2 shows CE cohort graduation and transfer rates: These transfer rates reflect the percent of the cohort whose last program was other than GC and thus don't explicitly account for the time it took students to transfer out of GC.  Transfer rates showed a sharp improvement with the 1992 cohort and continue to increase in subsequent cohorts.

Table 2- Transfer and Graduation Rates

Transfer rates are quite impressive and appear to be quite a bit higher than those for GC as a whole: For GC cohorts, when looking within a 5-yaer window, transfer rates have never exceeded 55%.  Below is a chart comparing 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year transfer rates between CE and GC as a whole.  As is evident below, after 1-year, CE students transferred at rates similar to the entire GC cohort up until the 1995 CE cohort, when 1-year transfer rates greatly increased.  It does appear, however, that this 1 year transfer gap is decreasing.  By two years after entry into college, CE students transfer at reliably higher rates.

Chart 2

GC students tend to experience a post-transfer GPA drop. Commanding English GC students appear to experience this also as illustrated in Chart 3 below.  While in General College, CE students tend to achieve a higher GPA than non-CE GC students.  Both groups are very similar in their post transfer cumulative GPA.  A similar but more pronounced pattern is evident when one compares GPA from the term immediately prior to transfer with that from the first term where the student is in another unit.  It is difficult to know whether CE students' superior GC GPA performance is due to better college preparation, (these students tend to have higher AAR scores than non-CE GC students), some other within student factor like motivation or educational/career goals, the unique experience of the CE program, or some combination of these: The average AAR for all CE transfer students from 1991 to 1997 is 102.53 (SD=21.55) and the average for all non-CE GC transfer students over this time period is 86.29 (SD=15.53).  It must be noted however that far more CE students are missing an AAR.  Of the transfer student pool referred to above, AAR scores were available for 88% of the non-CE GC students and only 49% of the CE students. 

Chart 3- note: due to limitations in the reporting data bases, all pre and post transfer grade point averages are based only on day school course work.

It is interesting that this superior performance is not as evident in post-transfer GPA.  But, this might be expected even if college preparation does relate to CE students' performance while in GC since college preparation best relates to college performance during the first year, but after that, the correlation between pre-college preparation and college performance decreases.  Also, some of the comparison could be confounded by differences in transfer programs between non-CE and CE students, and/or by ethnic differences between the groups.  Indeed, the majority (90%) of these CE students are Asian, but only a small portion (9%) of the non-CE GC students are Asian.  But, in terms of pre and post transfer cumulative GPA, non-CE Asian students still perform differently than CE Asian students- the pattern of pre-post transfer GPA for non-CE Asian students is remarkably similar to the overall non-CE pattern in Chart 3.  However, these two groups of Asian students do differ in transfer programs.  The superior GC GPA for CE students most likely results from the students' transfer program goal, as subsequent analyses will show.  Below is an analysis of how pre and post transfer college performance relates to transfer-program.

Table 3- Transfer Program Comparison Between Commanding English (CE) GC Students and Non-CE GC Students

a-       a- percent based upon 2632 students

b-      b-  percent based upon 304 students

- Table only shows programs transferred into by both CE and non-CE students: Other final transfer programs for CE students include: Nursing (N=4), and Medical Tech (N=9).

The majority of these CE and non-CE GC students initially transferred to CLA (79% for non-CE and 72% for CE), but more CE students transfer from CLA to another program.  Where do the students go who transfer out of CLA?  The most frequent post-CLA programs for non-CE students are Education (25.6%), University College (19.7%), Human Ecology (11.8%), Management (9.9%), and Agriculture (9.3).  The most frequent post-CLA programs for CE students are Technology (32.6%), Management (18.9%), Human Ecology (14.7%), Medical Tech (9.5%), and Agriculture (6.3%).  It does appear that the distribution of academic programs differs between the two groups as illustrated in Table 3 above.  The most striking differences are 1).  The higher concentration of CE students in Technology, and to some degree, Management, and 2).  The somewhat higher concentration of non-CE students in Education, CLA, and University College.  Thus, it appears that the differences in pre and post transfer GPA could be related to post-transfer program.  Below are graphs which corroborate this notion and depict overall pre and post transfer GPA for several groups of non-CE and CE students: those that transfer to CLA and stay there, those that ultimately transfer to Technology, those that ultimately transfer to Management, and those that ultimately transfer to Human Ecology.

  Chart 4^                                                                    Chart 5^

  Chart 6^                                                                    Chart 7^

Degree Attainment

The data in Table 2 reflect degree postings accrued during or before Summer 1999.  Therefore, data for the 1995 cohort reflect a 4-year graduation rate, data for the 1994 cohort reflect a 5-year graduation rate, etc. These graduation rates (as was evident in the prior report) are on the rise:  1). in 1996, 5-year graduation rates were at 3%, 18%, 14%, and 10% for the 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991 cohorts respectively; the most recent 5-year graduation rate (for the 1994 cohort) is at 24%!; 2). The most recent 4 year graduation rate (for the 1995 cohort) is near that of the 5-year graduation rates from the late 80's/early 90's cohorts; 3). in 1996, 6-year graduation rates were at 9%, 29%, and 22%, for the 1988, 1989, and 1990 cohorts respectively; the most recent 6-year graduation rate (for the 1993 cohort) is at 35%!  When calculated as a percentage of the total cohort, graduation rates are higher than those for the GC cohort as a whole, but when calculated as a percentage of transfer students, the difference in graduation rate decreases.  So, CE students show higher graduation rates because more of them transfer out of GC, but once they have transferred, they have about the same likelihood of graduating as other transferred GC students.

  Tables 4&5- Comparison Between Commanding English Graduation Rates and Overall GC Graduation Rates