Dartblog

Although the Dartmouth Fact Book provides extensive details on the admissions of different ethnic groups to the College, it does not offer any information at all on how successful these groups are at graduating — which I think is the necessary bookend to admissions data. This omission must be intentional because the administration gathers precisely this data in order to submit it to the NCAA, as do all other colleges and universities with competitive athletic programs.

The College energetically recruits Native Americans (a group more frequently called American Indians beyond the Hanover Plain; see the NCAA form below, too) to come to Hanover: members of different tribes currently constitute 4-5% of each incoming class. However, six years after matriculating, only a little more than three quarters (77%) of these students have received a degree — a result below the College average.

These figures have only varied slightly since 2001.

Dartmouth could do better here. If the College is going to make special efforts to recruit certain students in furtherance of our historical mission, it should make equally concerted efforts to ensure that they graduate. It is time to re-establish our commitment to the Charter; extra academic advising and other resources could help American Indians graduate as frequently as members of other groups. And overall, the College should look at why, according to an AEI study, 7% of all students have failed to earn a degree six years after matriculating.

Note: Curiously, the figures in the AEI study, and the statistics that the College submits to the NCAA, diverge slightly.

Addendum: The goal of the NCAA’s data gathering in this instance is to study the graduation rate of students receiving athletic scholarships. Dartmouth offers neither athletic nor merit-based scholarships, so the College provides no information at all to the NCAA on the graduation rate of, for example, our football players. However, Coach Teevens informs me that in his five years here he has had but a single player transfer to another school and only one in academic difficulty, a student who is still working to finish his degree. Otherwise all of his players have graduated, most of them after four years — undoubtedly with a future Treasury Secretary and General Electric CEO among them.