How Georgia State Stopped Students From Slipping Through The Cracks

GSU’s advisement center caught the attention of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who visited with students there in November.

Al Such / WABE

Georgia State University has become a model for colleges across the country when it comes to helping students graduate on time. This recognition comes after GSU officials realized in 2003 that plenty of their students were not graduating on time. Just 32 percent were earning diplomas. School officials decided to use data to keep more students on track.

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“We used 10 years of data, 2.5 million Georgia State grades, 140,000 student records,” said Tim Renick, GSU’s vice provost and vice president for enrollment management and student success. “What we were doing in the data is looking for academic behaviors in the past that correlated to students dropping and flunking out.”