More Wayne State University students are graduating in push to eliminate disparities
More Wayne State University students are graduating in push to eliminate disparities
By David Jesse
There are words to fairly describe Wayne State University's graduation rate eight years ago when M. Roy Wilson was interviewing for the school's presidency: awful, disgraceful, lousy and pathetic. "It was dismal," he said recently in an interview with the Free Press. "I had never seen graduation rates for any (college) that low." They had been dreadful for some time. Only about a a quarter of students graduated from Wayne State within six years in 2011, two years before Wilson's hiring. The rates actually were lower than that overall rate for subgroups of students. Just under 8% of Black students were graduating in six years; just under 17% of Hispanic/Latino students; just over 18% of first-generation students and right around 16% of low-income students, according to university statistics. "What I recall is that when I came here, there were a lot of excuses around our graduation rate," Wilson said. "I just didn't really want to hear excuses. Let's talk about how we are going to change it." In 2021, those numbers have all risen sharply, the results of a campaign to increase the graduation rates started under Wilson's predecessor, Allan Gilmour, and ramped up under Wilson. The overall six-year graduation rate is up to just under 56%; the Black student graduation rate is about 35%; the Hispanic/Latino rate is just over 38%; the first-generation rate is almost 45% and the low-income rate is just over 47%.