According to UCR’s Office of Institutional Research, the university’s graduation rate has risen by 10 percentage points over the last six years. The data includes the amount of UCR’s 2013 freshmen cohort that graduated in the summer of 2019. This makes the UCR graduation rate 76%. The five-year graduation rate has shown a new UCR record at 75%. Four-year graduation rates for UCR are at 61%, which is an increase of 20 points in seven years, according to UCR’s Office of Institutional Research.
Assistant Vice Chancellor of the Office of Institutional Research, Scott Heil stated, “We don’t always know the exact causes of every change, but the new highs do correspond with a time when the campus was putting together a graduation initiative that eventually led to a series of changes in policies and practices.”
According to Heil, the graduation initiative was led by the Graduation Rate Task Force, which gave recommendations on how to increase graduation rates. “The initiative began its implementation in 2014, which was the year after the freshmen cohort that reached 76% was admitted,” added Heil. Some of these recommendations include: providing students with the most demanding and critical courses more frequently, providing guidance to first years students’ with classroom lecturers and limiting undeclared major status to one year.
