Define Underrepresented Group and Time to Degree

Sunny Li:

I am asked to fill out a survey regarding annual performance review for a federal grant program. Two questions come up that I need help to define the terms. The first one is “underrepresented group” (in the context of “has number of students in the underrepresented groups increased?”) How is underrepresented group defined? Is there a standard figure as to what percentage it should be for certain groups (e.g., women, minorities, etc.) and anything that fall behind that percentage is considered underrepresented group or it is interpreted something else?

The second term is time to degree for a particular year. Does it go backwards, starting with that particular year, say 05-06. You first get all the students that graduated that year and see when they started, then calculate the average time to get the degrees. Or is it going forward, start with a cohort and see how many years it takes them to graduate. If it is going forward, what does time to degree for 05-06 mean and what about those never graduated?

Michael Tamada:

Usually, "underrepresented groups" means Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. However sometimes in certain contexts others, such as women or Asians, might be called "underrepresented." I would say look at the grant itself.

I can't imagine calculating time to degree using a technique other than the counting backward one that you describe.

Lillian Zhu:

Time-to-Degree is a measure that if undergraduate students get their bachelor degrees within 'standard' 4 year degree completion time length, or have to prolong the degree completion to 5 years or even 6 years (which is also called 150% of time-to-degree length). Counting the number of first-time freshmen students in the entering cohort is an easy and accurate way to get the cohort graduation rate and we have been doing the same for the entering transfer cohort. If a student graduated in less than 4 years, then s/he is part of the 4-year degree calculation. For those who still working on the degree after 6 years, they are not part of the graduation rate calculation. This is the practice on all SUNY campus as well as the system office. College Board's Common Data Set asking the graduation rate from the first-time full-time freshmen cohort for up to six years.

There are certain uses for the backward method, but not a good one for graduation rate in my opinion, because it is difficult to come up a denominator for the calculation. I have done a study for the transfers graduated by a certain semester. The advantage of looking at those graduated at the same time can tell more of institutional environment such as faculty, academic services, etc.

Meihua Zhai:

Ditto Michael's response, but in my experience, Asian was NEVER counted as *underrepresented* minority and since over 10 years ago, women have been the majority in postsecondary ed. ;) Regarding the distinction between Graduation Rates and Time-to-degree studies, below is a brief description that I wrote for a study that I'm working on. For your reference only: ------ Time-to-degree vs graduation rates --- Time-to-degree is a term used to describe the time it takes for a student to complete his/her degree. It begins with a cohort of graduates and looks backwards to track the amount of time elapsed from the student’s first matriculation to degree attainment. Thus, only those students who actually graduated are included in the analysis. Time-to-degree is generally measured in chronological years. Some researchers use terms enrolled or chronological months to measure Time-to-degree (Knight, 2002; Adelman, 2006; Horn & Berger, 2004)

A Time-to-degree study is different in perspective from a study of graduation rates. Major differences between time-to-degree and graduation rates can be summarized as follows: Time-to-degree is a measure of how long graduates took to complete their degree requirements, from first entering the institution to graduation. A graduation rate is a measure of the odds that a student who starts at an institution will finish a degree there within a certain period of time, such as a four-year or a six-year period of time. A second important distinction between time-to-degree and graduation rates is that a time-to-degree cohort shares a common degree-completion date, whereas a graduation rates cohort shares a common starting date. Time-to-degree and graduation rates also differ on their cohort components. The time-to-degree cohort includes all students who completed their degrees regardless of how they started and when or if they were part-time or full-time; the graduation rates cohort starts usually focuses on first-time, full-time freshmen and it keeps those who dropped out in the cohort. In terms of methodology, a time-to-degree study counts backward from degree completion to first matriculation to determine how long it took for the students to graduate, whereas graduation rates studies track student progress over time.