Georgia State University 2024

“Georgia State is a national example of how higher education institutions can support the success of all students, no matter their backgrounds or the challenges they may face in college.”

–Sara Levy, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, 2022

When it comes to higher education, the vision of the United States as a land of equal opportunity is far from a reality. Today, it is eight times more likely that an individual in the top quartile of Americans by annual household income will hold a college degree than an individual in the lowest quartile.   Nationally, white students graduate from college at rates more than 10 points higher than Hispanic students and are more than twice as likely to graduate with a 4-year college degree when compared to black students.   According to the United States Department of Education, Pell-eligible students nationally have a six-year graduation-rate of 39%, a rate that is 20 points lower than the national average.  Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequities in higher education and is serving to make reducing these differences even more challenging for colleges across the nation.

Certainly, these challenges are faced at Georgia State University. In 2003, Georgia State was the embodiment of these national failings.  The institutional 6-year graduation rate for bachelor’s students stood at 32% and underserved populations were foundering.  Graduation rates were 22% for Hispanics, 29% for African Americans, and 18% for African American males.  Pell students were graduating at a rate more than 10 percentage points lower than non-Pell students. 

Rising Graduation Rates

Today, thanks to a campus-wide commitment to student success and more than a dozen strategic initiatives implemented over the past several years, graduation rates have increased significantly at Georgia State University. The institutional graduation rate for bachelor-degree seeking students has improved by more than 20 points (See Appendix, Chart 1).   These interventions have led to increases across the board in the success rates of all demographic groups.  For example, rates are up 32 points for Latinos (to 55%), and 29 points for African Americans (to 53%). Positive student outcomes and the elimination of achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and income have characterized the work on student success at Georgia State university for nearly a decade. On average, since 2015, there have been no achievement gaps based on these characteristics (Chart 2) with the graduation rate of African American, Hispanic, and low-income students often consistent with the rate of the student body overall—an all but unprecedented accomplishment for a large, public university. This accomplishment is even more notable considering the size of these populations at Georgia State. GSU enrolls more than 26,000 Pell eligible students more than 22,000 African American students and more than 7000 Hispanic students.  This year, the vagaries of the pandemic recovery are reflected in the reemergence of small differences in graduation outcomes. Specifically, the graduation rates for Pell students were 1 point lower than the student body average. However, even with the challenges associated with teaching and learning over the last couple of years, for the sixth consecutive year, Georgia State University awarded more than 10,000 degrees.  This includes 7152 undergraduate degrees (representing a 70% increase since 2010), awarded 5185 bachelor’s degrees including a record number of degrees to Hispanic students (765, up 160% since 2010) and a near record to Asian students (926, up 70 % since 2010) (Charts 3 and 4).  Georgia State awards more bachelor’s degrees annually to African American, Hispanic, first generation, and Pell students than any other university in Georgia.  In fact, seven years ago Georgia State University became the first institution in U.S. history to award more than 2,000 bachelor’s degrees to African American students in a single year, a metric it has matched every year since.  No other college or university in the U.S. has done so even once. (Chart 5) According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, for the tenth consecutive year, Georgia State conferred more bachelor’s degrees to African Americans than any other non-profit college or university that is not exclusively online in the United States.  Georgia State is also ranked first nationally in the number of bachelor’s degrees conferred to African Americans and in a number of specific disciplines including biological and biomedical sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, finance, foreign languages, marketing, physical sciences, social sciences, business management, and interdisciplinary studies degrees.  Importantly, students are succeeding in some of the most challenging majors at Georgia State.  Over the past decade, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in STEM fields has increased by 179% overall, 179% for African American students, 261% for African American males, and 641% for Hispanic students, far outpacing their enrollment growth over this period (Chart 6).

Perimeter College

The news is also encouraging at Perimeter College, Georgia State’s associate-degree-granting college that enrolls nearly 18,000 students. Consolidation between Georgia State University and Perimeter College was finalized in 2016, less than 10 years ago.  We are making exceptional progress. While there is still more work to be done, since consolidation, the Perimeter 3-year graduation rate has almost quadrupled, rising from 6.5% to 22% (Chart 7).   Significant progress has been made increasing success outcomes for all students.  Since the year before consolidation was announced, graduation rates for Hispanic students have increase by 18 points.  They have increased by 15 points for white students, 13 points for black students and 17 points for students who are Pell eligible.

Just like on the Atlanta campus, equity gaps have narrowed significantly.  In 2020 for the first time, African American, Hispanic and Pell students all graduated from Perimeter College at rates at or above those of the student body overall.  As recently as 2015, white students were graduating from Perimeter at rates more than two-and-a-half times the rate of African American students. In 2020, both white and African American students graduated at the same rate—exceptional progress in such a short period of time.   While the pandemic has disproportionately impacted Perimeter’s low-income and African American students, reopening some gaps in 2021, all populations are graduating at higher rates than 2019, immediately prior to the pandemic.  Additionally, nearly all demographic groups are graduating at quadruple the rates prior to consolidation. The elimination of equity gaps based on race, ethnicity and income level has been a distinctive and much-discussed accomplishment of Georgia State’s Atlanta campus, and the rapid progress in this area at Perimeter College lends credence to the view that Georgia State’s unique data-based, proactive and systematic approach to student success helps level the playing field for students from diverse backgrounds (Chart 8).  

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 2020), 83% of Perimeter students now graduate, are retained, and/or successfully transfer to four-year institutions within three years of first enrollment, ranking Perimeter College 20th in the nation (among 2,000+ community colleges ranked).  Despite steep declines in Perimeter College overall enrollments in the years leading up to consolidation and new declines brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Perimeter College conferred 1967 associate degrees in 2023-24, representing the first increase since the pandemic (Chart 9).  This number was down from a high of 2336 in 2020-2021 but was proportionate to the enrollment decline at Perimeter College since 2020. Even given this decrease, Perimeter College ranked 13th in the nation for the number of associate degrees awarded to African Americans annually awarding nearly 900 degrees last year alone (Chart 10).   There is more to be done at Perimeter College but results since consolidation have been transformative.

English and Math Success

A key measure of future college success is the completion of and English and a Math course in the first year of college. This key measure can be an early predictor of student retention and ultimately graduation. Prior to the global pandemic, the first-year completion rate for bachelor’s students in the freshman cohort 2018 was 92.3% for English, 82.4% for Math, and 79.0% for successful completion of a course in both disciplines. These numbers took a significant drop during the pandemic years but have increased and exceeded pre-pandemic success levels for Math (84%) and combined (80.3%) (Chart 11).

The freshman cohort of associate's degree seeking students has also started to recover from the pandemic lows with an English completion rate of 80.5%, up from a low of 73.3% in 2020. Math success is also recovering from a low of 64.5% in 2020 to now 67.2%. The combined success rate for Math and English stands at 62%. While there is still room for improvement with the associate's degree seeking students to return to pre-pandemic success, progress is being made to help this population (Chart 12).

A National Model

Georgia State University is a unique institution striving to support learners of all ages, identities, and experiences.  We are passionate about being “A Place for All”.   Student Success is a foundational pillar of GSU’s recently adopted Strategic Plan, Blueprint to 2033.  In the plan, Georgia State University commits to continue the work of demonstrating that students from all backgrounds can succeed at equal rates by improving retention and graduation rates and positioning students for success. While maintaining our commitment to equity in education, the strategic plan challenges the university to expand our national leadership through our innovative approach to student success.  Over the last decade, Georgia State University’s student success accomplishments have been the subject of growing national attention. Highlights include:

• In December 2014, former President Barack Obama highlighted the exemplary work being done at Georgia State University to assist students through its Panther Retention Grant program in his address at White House College Opportunity Day.  
• In 2014, Georgia State received the inaugural national Award for Student Success from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), and in 2015 it received the second-ever Institutional Transformation Award from the American Council on Education (ACE).  Both awards highlighted Georgia State’s exceptional progress in student success and its elimination of all equity gaps.
• In August 2015, Georgia State was invited to provide expert testimony on strategies for helping low-income students succeed before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension of the U. S. Senate.
• In July 2017, Bill Gates made a half-day visit to campus specifically to learn more about Georgia State’s innovative use of data and technology to transform outcomes for low-income students.
• Between 2018 and 2020, the Brookings Institution, Harvard’s CLIMB initiative, and US News and World Report released reports placing Georgia State among the top 1% of institutions in the nation for “social mobility”—helping students move from low-income status at matriculation to upper-income status as alumni.
• In spring 2018, The New York Times, in a feature article, highlighted Georgia State’s status as conferring the most degrees to African Americans in the country and labeled the university “an engine of social mobility,” while the Harvard Business Review and NPR’s “The Hidden Brain” both chronicled the impact of Georgia State’s groundbreaking work using an A.I.-enhanced chatbot to reduce summer melt.
• Georgia State’s student-success efforts became the subject of a feature-length documentary, Unlikely (2018), and an award-winning book, Won’t Lose This Dream: How An Upstart Urban University Changed the Rules of a Broken System (2020) by Andrew Gumbel
• In fall 2023, U.S. News and World Report ranked Georgia State 1st in the nation for its Commitment to Undergraduate Teaching among all public universities and as the 2nd Most Innovative University in the nation (behind only ASU). Georgia State’s First-Year Experience and Learning Communities were ranked 4th and 6th in the nation respectively.
• In fall 2024, the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) recognized the work of Georgia State University and the student success leadership team of Dr. Allison Calhoun-Brown and Dr. Timothy Renick with the “Sentinel of Innovation and Leadership: Power of One Award” at the UIA National Student Success Summit in Tempe, AZ. This award recognizes their superior commitment to implementing and scaling impactful student success programs.

Motivated by a desire to make an impact not only in the lives of its own students but also in the lives of students nation-wide, Georgia State University has made a conscious and significant commitment of time and resources to sharing with others the lessons that we have learned.  To better support the dissemination of this work, as well as to incubate the next-generation of student-success innovations, Georgia State University established the National Institute of Student Success (NISS) in October 2020.  By the end of 2024, the NISS will have already engaged with more than 130 campuses nationally and several state higher education systems.  These campuses serve nearly 1.5 million undergraduate students. In addition to the diagnostic and coaching services that allow NISS staff to work with individual campuses, the NISS has also developed a self-service online teaching and research portal (the Accelerator) that has accessible content for anyone wanting to learn more about best practices to increase student outcomes. Significantly in 2023, the University System of Georgia’s (USG) included working with the NISS as a major component of its new Strategic Plan 2029. Partnering with the NISS, USG institutions will be supported to diagnose barriers to student success and develop and implement actions plans around best practices to improve student outcomes at these institutions. Currently, GSU is participating in the NISS diagnostic phase with results expected in early 2025.

Emerging Student Success Strategies

Strategies to Improve Student Success

Though Georgia State University has built an international reputation for innovation and student success, there is still much work to be do.  The new Strategic Plan, Blueprint to 2033, challenges the University community to expand our national leadership through curricular innovation, greater access to education and reliance on evidence-based student success programs for all students at all levels. In association with its Momentum Year plans for 2024, Georgia State University worked on several exciting projects including: the Accelerator Academy for academic recovery, a chatbot for academic support, the use of SteppingBlocks data in first year courses to improve the connection between college to career, a faculty task force to improve student outcomes in math, and enhanced student onboarding.  A report on each of these projects is included below.