MUNCIE – Ball State University is the state’s biggest gainer, and the East Central Region of Ivy Tech Community College is the state’s biggest loser, in a new report of on-time college completion rates.
Only a third of students who entered Ball State in 2005 graduated within four years, while nearly 45 percent of those who enrolled there in 2010 graduated within four years, according to an Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) report released on Wednesday.
BSU’s 12 percentage-point increase over five years was the highest among Indiana’s four-year public schools, followed by Purdue University-West Lafayette (11.5), Indiana University-Bloomington (10.1) and IUPUI (8.4). Indiana State University’s on-time graduation rate actually declined by 1.1 percentage point during the five-year period.
While Ball State showed the most improvement, its 44.7 percent on-time completion rate remains in third place behind IU-Bloomington at 59.8 percent and Purdue-West Lafayette at 49.1 percent. Only19.4 percent of ISU students and 18.9 percent of IUPUI students graduate on time.
Meanwhile, only 1.2 percent of the students who enrolled in 2012 at Ivy Tech East Central (Muncie, Marion, Anderson and New Castle) graduated on time (within two years). That’s down 3.3 percentage points — the biggest decline among all Ivy Tech campuses — from the 4.5 percent on-time graduation rate among East Central students who enrolled in 2007.
Republican state lawmakers cited poor graduation rates and declining enrollment this year when they eliminated a $25 million appropriation to modernize Ivy Tech Muncie’s outdated Cowan Road campus, which was to have included a new manufacturing technology center.
Sen. Luke Kenley, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, told The Star Press in May that it was “time to call timeout” to “see if we can’t find our path here” before moving forward in the next budget cycle with a plan that is “successful,” because “right now it’s not happening.”
Ivy Tech’s statewide graduation rates are the lowest in the nation.