Graduation rate continues to fall amidst retention efforts

Dylan Pichnarcik / THE GATEPOST

By Cole Johnson

Staff Writer

Despite achieving retention rates on par with pre-pandemic levels, graduation rates at Framingham State have declined.

Framingham State’s first- to second-year retention rate for Fall 2025 was 74%, according to data from the Office of Institutional Research. This surpassed Fall 2024 by 3% and equaled the retention rate of Fall 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (DHE) most recently listed the average state university retention rate at 75% for 2023.

However, the most recent 2018 cohort’s graduation rate was 48%, based on a report from the Office of Institutional Research. The 2017 cohort’s graduation rate was 50%. 

The most recent statewide graduation rate from the DHE’s 2017 cohort data was 56%.

Graduation rates show the percentage of first-time, full-time students who complete a degree in six years or less. Cohorts are named for the fall semester in which the students begin their first year.

Lorretta Holloway, vice president of Student Success, said there doesn’t appear to be a correlation between higher retention rates and graduation rates at Framingham State.

“We’ve worked very hard to raise our retention rate … but it’s not manifesting in our graduation rates,” she said.

Holloway said she doesn’t expect retention rates to continue rising at the same pace. She added a major long-term goal of President Nancy Niemi for the University is 80% retention and persistence.

She said, “You have to be aspirational. Some of these things will probably not happen until after I retire, and there'll be certain things that, even if we start [now], it will take some momentum to build.”

Holloway identified the second-largest demographic of non-returning students as those leaving in their second year.

Holloway said the Fall 2022 and 2023 cohorts had retention rates of 71% and 72%, respectively, but had second- to third-year persistence rates of 56% and 57%, respectively.

“What you see overall in the research about second-year students is they don't necessarily feel supported the way they were when they first came in. There's a lack of purpose,” she said.

Holloway said compared to the new excitement of being a freshman or the specialized courses and internships offered to upperclassmen, the experience of a second-year student can be less engaging.

“[As a student], I'm not necessarily able, on my own, to see a connection between what I'm doing now and who I want to be three years from now,” Holloway said.

Though the issue of retention past the second year is commonly referred to as the “sophomore slump,” Holloway noted that 28% of second-year students were technically freshmen by credit hour.

“The returning students are competing with incoming students for [class] spaces because there's going to be an overlap of the classes that they need to take,” she said.

Holloway said the reasons for leaving among students varied considerably.

She said, “Every person that I've talked to who has left or left and come back, none of their stories are the same.

“A common thing is money. The difference is where the money ranks in the multitude of [reasons] why they leave,” she added.

Holloway said a common misconception is students who leave are academically struggling. “We found that almost half of the people [who left] were in good standing.”

Holloway added one goal is to expand support resources to reach students “in the middle who are just getting through, but that doesn't mean they're not working as hard as anybody else. They might be struggling to get that C.”

Meg Nowak Borrego, vice president of Student Affairs, said another factor affecting retention and persistence is students who transfer out of Framingham State.

“We are the kind of school that that kind of decision-making would impact,” she said. “Have we failed if we set them up to be successful at those other institutions? I don't think so. But when you just look at the numbers, it may seem like we have.”

Framingham State received a $1.3 million grant from the Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services (SUCCESS) fund in early 2025.

The SUCCESS program was created in 2021 to invest in wraparound services for students facing systemic barriers in Massachusetts colleges.

According to Holloway, the University has since funded increased support for student retention and persistence.

Holloway said the University uses a program called Starfish to compile and analyze data regarding student retention, persistence, and graduation.

The University uses dashboards to monitor persistence, as well as an enhanced dashboard to monitor retention that updates weekly, according to Holloway.

“What we're really trying to do with digging into the data is to be able to be much more intentional with support,” she said.

“We're trying to use some of that information to better plan and think about not just why students leave, but [about] the structures that we're putting in place to make it easier for them to stay,” she said.

Some of the University's larger changes include an increased number of academic advisors and student success coaches. Holloway said these would help more popular departments better manage student advising.

“[In] some of the departments that have a lot of majors, there are some advisors who, in addition to their full-time job, have 60 to 75 advisees,” she said.

According to Holloway, these advisors’ first-year students will be advised by staff at the Advising Center to give advisors more time to concentrate on upperclassmen with more complicated schedules.

Framingham State participates in a program called the National Institute for Student Success, according to Provost Kristen Porter-Utley.

The organization is run out of Georgia State University. Porter-Utley said, “Georgia State University is a national leader in the area of student success. They've created a template to collect information - [to] understand the current situation at their institution and at other institutions now.”

Based on data strategies provided by Georgia State, Framingham State is working on building its own models for student success in order to address patterns of struggle and encourage patterns of success.

Porter-Utley expects by the end of the Spring 2026 semester, Framingham State will have its own “playbook” of student success initiatives to work from.

Porter-Utley said faculty are currently looking at revising curricula to appeal to more students. “Departments are working constantly on thinking about, ‘Does our major and does our program resonate with students now?’”

Nowak Borrego said the grant funding also allowed for the hire of an additional career counselor in Career Services.

“We've changed some of our models and career services to offer more career-based guidance in the classroom, as well as outside the classroom, which we think will benefit our students who are trying to figure out what [to] do with a philosophy degree or a degree that isn't as direct a path as some of our more professional majors,” she said.

Holloway sees the expanded initiatives and support structures as a way to address struggles with persistence.

“I think it's especially important for the second-year students, because one of the things that second-year students, or sophomore students, say is they just don't feel seen. They don't feel like anybody notices them,” she said.

For first-year students, the main obstacle to retention is often attendance, said Dr. Patricia Lynne, a professor and first-year writing coordinator who teaches composition courses for freshmen.

“The biggest, consistent problem I see with first year to second year, or even first semester to second semester, is that the students just disappear from the class in one way or another,” she said.

“I've seen a tremendous drop-off in the last week and a half in terms of [engagement]. And I'm trying to reach out to those students and pull them in. This is true of all of the Comp I instructors,” Lynne said.

Lynne said expectations for students haven’t been the same since the pandemic.

She said, “Executive functioning is a problem. I mean, I asked my students the second week of classes, ‘How many of you have some kind of agenda or homework system for tracking what you're supposed to do?’ Two hands out of 18 went up.”

Some Composition I courses require an additional writing studio. Lynne said the support system of the studios helps connect students with necessary resources to succeed.

“It’s intended to simultaneously teach them academic skills so that they will succeed here, but also get them connected to the campus community, both of which are problems. The more we can get students connected, the more they will stop feeling like they don't belong here,” Lynne said.

Overall, Holloway said, the challenges with retention and persistence are part of a wider trend among college students.

“What we're increasingly seeing in the state universities, which community colleges have seen all the time, is just increasing levels of need,” Holloway said. 

“It's been becoming a bigger challenge for schools like ours to be able to provide that support,” she added.

Anna Flaherty, a sophomore, said she’s had no trouble keeping up with her courses. “All the professors are really helpful, and that’s what motivates me - their motivation motivates me.”

Roman Sisson, a transfer sophomore English major, said he feels supported here. “My trip from Michigan to here is one-way. I'm starting my life all over here.”

Juniors Kendall Winston and Miranda Allicon, both studio art majors, said the campus environment can be somewhat empty after classes.

“Academically, I like it [here], but socially, there is nothing to do here on the weekends. Everybody goes home,” Winston said.

Allicon said, “I commute, so after classes, I just go straight home because there’s nothing for me to do, or I don’t want to stay for it. I feel like there needs to be something more … to keep us more engaged.”

Haley Lupien, a junior English major, said she loves it here. “I make the effort to involve myself in the community, so if you put that effort out, you get that effort back in.”