CSUN Graduation Rate Ranks Low, Study Reveals : Education: Only 28% of freshmen who entered the university in 1985 earned degrees within six years.

The graduation rate of freshman students who entered Cal State Northridge in 1985 ranks in the bottom 10% among all 298 major schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., with only 28% earning a diploma at CSUN six years after they started.

The low showing reflects long-running complaints about the campus, one of the largest in the 20-school California State University system.

Many students say a recurring shortage of general education classes required for graduation hampers their progress. Others complain that they have received conflicting information on graduation requirements, causing more delays. An independent college accreditation team in 1991 criticized the school for those problems.

The combined graduation rate of all CSUN students who entered as freshmen in the years 1983 to 1985 is 29%, while the graduation rate among athletes at the school during the same time was 27%.

CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson said the graduation figures do not reflect the numbers of students who may take longer than six years to earn a degree at CSUN.

Part of the reason for the delay is that most CSU students work at least 20 hours a week, with about one-fifth of those students working a 40-hour week, she said.

Wilson said she does not believe that state budget cuts--which have prompted the cancellation of more than 1,000 classes during the current school year--have much to do with the low graduation rates because the percentage has improved despite the school’s money troubles.

“Of CSUN students who entered the university in 1983-84, only 26.4% had graduated six years later,” Wilson said.

Nonetheless, Wilson said, she is instituting a student survey to help find out how the campus can improve its graduation rates.

The statistics were compiled by the NCAA to give prospective college athletes a way to compare the academic performance of students and athletes enrolled at Division I schools.

“Before we started compiling these numbers, universities were giving graduation rates based on all sorts of terms,” said Todd Petr, assistant director of research for the NCAA.

The average graduation rate among Division I schools, which all field major sports teams, is 54%, with Ivy League and University of California campuses reporting rates well above 60%. CSUN’s rate was better than only 28 of the 298 schools rated.

CSUN ranks sixth among the seven CSU schools in Division I athletics. The six-year graduation rate among all 20 CSU campuses averages between 45% and 55% for students enrolling between 1984 and 1986.

San Jose State was last among CSU schools, with a 21% graduation rate among freshmen who entered in 1985.

This is the second year that the NCAA has released the graduation measures. New federal rules will require colleges and universities to disclose the rates to all incoming students, beginning this summer.

The CSUN graduation rates reflect the criticisms of many current and former students who say that getting a seat in general education classes required for graduation is often difficult because of high demand and limited offerings.

That problem is likely to continue or worsen as the campus braces for more decreases in state funding and, as a result, additional cuts in the number of courses offered next year.

Another problem is inconsistent advice given to students about what courses they need to graduate. Nearly one-third of students fail to graduate the semester they had anticipated, often for that reason, according to the school’s accreditation report.

CSUN officials have for several years said that the school’s low graduation rate is the result of a high proportion of working students, many of whom take much longer than the four years traditionally set aside to complete a college education.

But a 10-year record compiled by the school’s office of educational equity shows that only 35% of the freshmen who started CSUN in 1978 had earned a degree there by 1988.

The trouble retaining students, especially minorities, and the school’s low graduation for all students was criticized in a February, 1991, campus evaluation by the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, the organization that accredits schools.

The school’s academic strengths are jeopardized, said the report, “when hundreds of students are turned away each semester from general education courses and when academic advising about general education and academic pursuits outside a student’s major is uneven, at best.”

The NCAA statistics also show that female athletes at CSUN performed much better than the average student--with half, 12 out of 24, of those who enrolled as freshmen in 1985 earning a degree within six years.

However, none of the 10 men in the same class had earned a degree by the summer of 1991.

CSUN enrolls about 28,000 students each fall, with slightly less than a quarter of them freshmen. The most popular degrees earned are in education, social science and history.

Graduation Rates

Percentage of students who graduated six years after enrolling as freshmen in 1985-86:

UC Berkeley: 75%

UCLA: 71%

USC: 65%

Cal State Fresno: 52%

Cal State Fullerton: 43%

Cal State Sacramento: 39%

San Diego State: 39%

Cal State Long Beach: 32%

Cal State Northridge: 28% San Jose State: 21%

Source: National Collegiate Athletic Assn., Division I schools