Cal State Long Beach rates best for Graduation Rates

Cal State Long Beach was touted in a Los Angeles Times article as being a top California State University when it comes to graduation rates.

The university increased its four-year graduation rate for those who enrolled as first-time freshmen to 34% from 16%. This progress stems from a CSU-wide initiative to increase graduation rates by 2025.

“The university worked hard to redesign bottleneck courses that historically had low completion rates,” Provost Brian Jersky said. “We have also increased course availability and improved technology to make scheduling easier, identify administrative hurdles and help faculty monitor students who need academic support.”

The graduation rates increase news came a day after the NCAA released its latest Graduation Success Rates for the class that enrolled in academic year 2012-13. Beach Athletics showed an 89% success rate for its student-athletes.

That rate is two percentage points higher than the school's previous best of 87% from the 2011-12 graduation rate.

The Beach's improvement of two points moved it into a tie with UC Davis for the best Graduation Success Rate in the Big West at 89% percent. It also represented the highest mark in the CSU and was only behind UCLA among public institutions statewide.

For the initiative, which began in 2015, the CSU was given $276 million. Funding came from the state, chancellor’s office and private funds.

The overall plan for the CSU is to increase graduation rates, eliminate equity gaps in degree completion and meet California's workforce needs. Collectively for the CSU, the four-year graduation rate for first-time students has increased to 27.5% in 2019, up from 19.3%.

Additionally, the two-year transfer rate is two years ahead of the estimated trajectory for meeting the Graduation Initiative's goal of 45%.

Cal State Long Beach, along with other CSU campuses, are expected to continue working toward meeting the initiative’s goals.