Look up Montgomery College on the government’s College Scorecard search engine and you’ll discover that 22 percent of students earn degrees at the community college. But according to College Navigator, another government website, just 14 percent of students at the Maryland school graduate. If that’s not confusing enough, if you type in Montgomery College on the government’s accreditation site, the graduation rate there is listed at 17 percent.
The numbers are all correct, it’s just that they’re based on different calculations. Still, any family researching colleges could find the dueling data points perplexing. And at a time when states are increasingly using graduation rates and other student outcomes to determine higher education funding, the data could prove detrimental to schools.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/06/21/three-graduation-rates-for-one-college-the-baffling-government-policy-that-could-confuse-students/