It’s a university that’s really taken seriously the idea of finding out why some

of the kids don’t complete college and really helping them along that progression

and they’ve had some amazing results.

Ten years ago, Georgia State had a graduation rate of about 30 percent.

The U.S. has the highest college dropout rate.

We’re number 1 in terms of the number of people who start college,

but were like number 20 in terms of the number of people who finish college.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve been able to get our graduation rate up to 53, 54 percent

which is the highest increase over that time period of any institution in the country.

As significantly, there’s no achievement gap here at Georgia State.

The African-American students, the Latino students, the white students, all graduate

at about the same rate.

They’re leading the way.

I wish other colleges would do some of the same.

We spend a lot of time really thinking about at-risk students.

Two-thirds of our students are coming from low income families.

They face special challenges in terms of being admitted, financial aid, and academic challenges.

You really have to negotiate all these things successfully in order to get to college,

in order to stay in college, and then in order to graduate from college.

Georgia State they take some of the students who they think are most at risk

and have them come in the summer.

They immediately get immersed in a social group.

They start to get credits, and get some positive reinforcement.

They engage kids in what they call a meta-major early on, picking a general area

and making sure your courses are largely on track for whatever your choice might be

so that you don’t waste credits.

That’s very important.

The heart of what we do is looking at the data.

We use predictive analytics to identify the factors that take students off the academic path.

When a student does something that suggests that they’re going to go off path, an alert

goes off, and somebody can reach out to them to help them get on the right path.

They did have to invest in more advisors and training those advisors to work with these

systems so it wasn’t like a software substitution effect.

It led to more advising sessions.

But the incentives were there for both the students and the school to really analyze

what’s off track and solve it as soon as possible.

Hearing the students I met with, how they got enough help to overcome those things

that’s always inspiring.