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Show A COLLEGIAL CULTURE CLASH: WHY WEBER’S GRADUATION RATES CONTINUE TO DWINDLE AUBREE ECKHARDTD | The Signpost April 19 Salduro w/ Mother Lights/Tanner Lex Jones/Carrie Myers at 9PM April 20 Dearth, Ghost Aquarium, and White Clouds at 9PM By TORI WALTZ Investigative Reporter WEEKLY EVENTS SUNDAY Texas Hold’em MONDAY Comedy Open Mic TUESDAY Poker Night WEDNESDAY Bingo & Trivia Night Thursday Karaoke Night Karaoke Night April 19 Bill n' Diane at 7:00PM In 2003, 18-year-old Christina Huerta entered Weber State University a wide-eyed first-generation student looking to pursue a degree in communications. Nearly 16 years later, she is receiving her diploma. Huerta had “mentally checked out of school” after her first two years, causing her grades and academic scholarship to slip. With no way to pay tuition, she decided to drop out during her fifth semester. “Going straight from high school to college was a lot to handle,” Huerta said. “I came from a low-income family, and I had to work.” She later revisited her education as the mother of a 1-year-old son, with another soon on the way. A week after giving birth to her second child, she returned to campus determined on finishing her degree. “I was in a different mindset at that age than I was when I was 18,” Huerta said. “I had a baby, and I came back a week later to take finals and everybody was like ‘What are you doing here?’ I want to graduate; that’s what I’m doing here.” Huerta’s academic persistence makes her an anomaly. Other students facing similar challenges at WSU drop out at substantial rates. According to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the rate of freshmen at WSU who graduated in six years as of 2017 was 38 percent. That, coupled with the fallto-fall student retention rate of the same year — which was 65 percent — places the school below the national average in terms of students who successfully graduate on time. In 2014, WSU experienced an initial cohort enrollment of 2,168 students, according to the university’s Student Persistence and Success Institutional Research. By fall semester 2015, nearly half of those students had dropped out. Additionally, the research showed WSU’s six-year graduation rate between 2008 and 2012, reaching a high of 21.2 percent and a low of 18.5 percent. These numbers are undoubtedly short when stacked up against schools like Brigham Young University and University of Utah, whose graduation rates lie between 60 and 80 percent. However, when compared to Utah Valley University and Dixie State University, two institutions with student demographics similar to Weber’s, the numbers are right in line. The data shows the amount of students in 2017 who graduated within six years of enrollment at UVU was 30 percent, a rate lower than WSU’s. At Dixie, that number was 18 percent, placing it at the bottom of the list of major universities and colleges in Utah. One of the common factors linking Weber, Dixie and UVU are their open-enrollment policies in student acceptance. Students are welcomed into the schools with open arms, regardless of high school grade point averages and college readiness assessment scores. “If you compare us against BYU, then that’s going to be a very different comparison,” Associate Provost for Enrollment Services Bruce Bowen said. “Most of the lower students that we admit here would have never gotten into that institution.” While this allows schools like Weber to reach a wider array of individuals, it also means a higher proportion of part-time students, working parents and students who require remediation to some degree in preparation for university-level coursework. Those factors are obstacles in a student’s education. Accord- |