VCU news

By Tom Gresham and Elinor Frisa

At colleges and universities, graduation day is full of emotions. One emotion that you see beaming on face after face of students, family members and friends is pride — pride that students completed their degrees, that they finished what they started, that their futures are brighter than when they first stepped foot on campus.

Earning a degree is one of the most obvious measures of success in higher education, but there are many others. The facts and figures below represent a sampling of what student success looks like at Virginia Commonwealth University, from graduation rates to career outcomes to the programs and resources that help students along the way.

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In the 2018-19 academic year, VCU granted roughly 7,800 degrees and certificates. Of these, roughly 5,300 were bachelor’s degrees, 1,400 were master’s degrees, 360 were doctoral degrees, 430 were first professional degrees and 330 were certificates.

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Since 2008, VCU has increased its six-year graduation rate by 37%. The rate is currently 67.4%, higher than the national average of 59.8% and the national average for public universities, which is 58.9%. (Note that the most recent national data available from the National Center for Education Statistics is for the cohort starting in 2010, while VCU’s data is more recent; it reflects data from the cohort starting in 2012).

VCU has been listed among the top 100 schools in the country for conferring the most degrees to minority students. While many colleges have troublesome gaps between graduation rates for underrepresented students versus their white counterparts, that gap is small at VCU. For instance, 64% of Hispanic/Latino students graduate in six years, compared to 68% of white students. Sixty-three percent of African Americans graduate in six years. These rates for Hispanic/Latino and African American students are significantly higher than the national averages, which are 54% and 40%, respectively.

Pell Grant-eligible students, who make up about a third of VCU’s undergraduate population, also fare well. Their six-year graduation rate is 63%.

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Many of VCU’s students come from difficult economic circumstances, but 17% move up two or more income quartiles after they graduate. This rate is among the highest of any university in the mid-Atlantic.

Whether a college education is worthwhile has been debated for decades, and while salary outcomes alone cannot capture the value of education, they do make the case that college graduates are financially better off than those with a high school degree. At VCU, 2% of students jump from the bottom quartile all the way to the top, the most in Virginia. And a student born into the bottom one-fifth of family incomes has a 27 percent chance of reaching the top one-fifth after graduating from VCU.

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Since it launched in July 2018, Handshake, the online job listings portal managed collaboratively by VCU’s three Career Services offices, has seen employers post 20,468 jobs. More than 12,600 were for full-time positions, and more than 4,700 were for internships. The rest comprised experiential-learning opportunities, such as research opportunities and volunteer positions.

Beyond hosting online job listings, VCU Career Services is dedicated to in-person support for students looking to get a head start on their careers post-graduation. Between July 2018 and April 2019, VCU Career Services hosted 290 presentations and workshops that helped students find jobs and prepare for the workforce, and during the same period its staff logged 21,241 interactions with students, compared to 17,798 in 2017-18. More than 3,000 students made appointments with career advisers or dropped in to meet with them.

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According to the VCU Outcomes Survey, of the students in the Class of 2017 who participated in experiential-learning activities, 86% reported that their experiences helped prepare them for the workplace. As part of an emphasis on increasing student participation in those valuable types of learning opportunities, VCU REAL (Relevant, Experiential and Applied Learning) is an initiative to help make experiential learning an integral part of the education of every VCU student.

VCU REAL is a student-centered and faculty-driven effort to ensure that students have at least one high-quality, experiential and career-focused learning experience while at VCU. Programs throughout the university already integrate experiential education, such as research and internships, but REAL will provide a common thread and anchor for all experiential-education activities at VCU. The goal is to have students enrolled in courses that are being tracked with a REAL designation by fall 2019.

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This fall, first-generation students can be paired with one of 54 student mentors who understand the first-gen college experience firsthand. The mentor program has grown quickly since it began in 2018 with 14 volunteer mentors. VCU enrolls many first-gen students — defined as students who do not have a parent or legal guardian who has earned a bachelor’s degree. Roughly one-third of the 2018 freshman class was first-gen — that’s about 1,500 students.

The You First at VCU initiative provides special support, programs and resources to these students, who may find navigating college particularly challenging without the guidance of family members. The mentors are sophomores, juniors and seniors who meet with their mentees to answer questions and help with anything from finding their way around campus to understanding how financial aid works. They will be in touch with incoming students this summer before they even arrive on campus to assist with the transition to college.

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Since launching in September, VCU’s Major Maps website has received nearly 60,000 page views from roughly 15,000 users. The major maps were one of the first initiatives of the Student Success unit, which formed in late 2017. 

What are major maps? They are planning tools that help students (current and prospective), advisers, faculty and family members strategically map out a student’s college experience depending on their program of study. The maps, which cover the length of the program — typically four years — provide recommended academic planning, career planning and suggestions for how to gain real-life experience, social networks and skills so students can maximize their time at VCU and get the most out of their major. The major maps also provide an easy-to-understand snapshot of what four years in their major of interest will look like and what kinds of careers they can expect after graduation.

Major maps are one of many tools that help students stay on track. The Student Success unit also recently started offering one-credit first-year courses that help students acclimate to college. Each course focuses on a particular topic — such as paying for college, maximizing study abroad and leadership skills for women of color — and students who take them have both higher retention rates and grade point averages than those who don’t. The courses address barriers to college persistence as well as help engage high-performing students who seek more research and leadership opportunities.

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VCU has more than 40 transfer agreements with community colleges. Transfer agreements include admission agreements that explain how transfer students can be guaranteed admission to VCU and articulation agreements that explain the courses students should take in various transfer pathways.

VCU’s Transfer Center is a resource for community college students before and after they arrive at VCU. Advisers work with community college students to identify courses to take in preparation for transferring to VCU, and the Transfer Center supports students to make the academic and social transitions smoothly.

More than 1,300 students transfer from Virginia community colleges to VCU each fall. The schools that supply the most VCU transfers are Northern Virginia Community College, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, John Tyler Community College, Germanna Community College and Thomas Nelson Community College.

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From 2010 to 2017, the six-year graduation rate for undergraduate research fellows is nearly perfect, at 99%. In addition, 93% of undergraduate research fellowship alumni from that period entered graduate or professional school.

Each year, the university and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program offer funding support for students to work on research projects under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Students in all majors are welcome to apply, and recipients represent disciplines and academic programs across both campuses. In addition to funds from UROP, the undergraduate research fellows receive support from partners such as the Division of Community Engagement, the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, iCubed, the Rice Rivers Center, the School of Social Work and the Department of Biology in the College of Humanities and Sciences.