By Josh Buntin, Jared Valleskey, Charlotte Tenebrini Steckart & Cooper Wild
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB) has long prided itself on its enrollment numbers and increasingly diverse student body. The university values student success and boasts that 99 percent of its graduates are employed, serving in the military, or pursuing higher education, according to the UWGB Factbook. 78 percent are employed. However, although UWGB has a high acceptance rate of 90 percent, only about 52 percent of these admitted students make it to graduation within six years of arriving.
According to data compiled by UWGB, graduation rates have consistently hung around 50 percent. For the Fall 2023 semester, the university passed a milestone of over 10,000 enrolled students and recently boasted an increase in their spring enrollment for Spring 2024, which represented a 5.2 percent increase from previous spring semesters. But, if the low retention rate persists, it is likely these students will not complete their degrees at UWGB. The COMM Voice investigated why these students are not finishing as Phoenixes within 6 years.
UWGB Provost Kate Burns explained the disparity between the acceptance and graduation rates. Burns said that while it was a complicated answer, the discrepancy was to be expected, particularly because no university has a 100 percent graduation rate. Still, UWGB is higher than a lot of other comprehensive schools within the Universities of Wisconsin (UW System). The students and their needs at UWGB are also different from other schools. “We are a different campus, and we serve a lot of commuter students, so only about 20 percent of our students live on campus. So, if you think about other schools within the UW System, When students live on campus, it’s a lot easier to have them be connected and engaged,” Burns said. She also went on to explain how “persistence” measures how students stay from semester to semester within an academic year, while “retention” refers to how students stay from year to year.
Some students drop out, some pause their education, and many leave because they transfer from UWGB to another school, typically a more prestigious school, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), which is the flagship of the UW-System. UW-Madison has an acceptance rate of 49 percent, which is far lower than UWGB, but its graduation rate is nearly 95 percent, far higher than UWGB. The school has experienced commentary as being “selective,” potentially leading prospective students to first attend schools with higher acceptance rates, such as UWGB, before then transferring to UW-Madison.
John Raider is a sophomore in the Communication program and Promotions Director for Radio GBX, the revival of UWGB’s student-run radio station. He is also employed as a host at Q90fm, a contemporary Christian radio station. After the end of the Spring 2024 semester, he will be transferring to UW-Madison and hopes to get involved with their student radio station, WSUM. He spoke about why he was leaving UWGB and said he was primarily looking for more opportunities in the broadcast industry. Raider said he couldn’t get into Madison when he was initially applying to college, but he took a shot at it once he had completed some time at UWGB.
Raider said he wants more opportunities for calling sports, something he believes UWGB cannot offer in the way UW-Madison can. He also expressed frustration with how far behind the university was with Madison in regard to student media. “Definitely an upgrade of the department financially and how far it’s gone. I think we have years to compete. I don’t know how to explain this, but like they have 10 times more funding, they’re years ahead of us because of the one mistake one student made with FCC in the 80s,” Raider said, referring to WGBW, the former over-the-air radio station of UWGB, losing their Federal Communication Commission license. He said his time at UWGB was beneficial, particularly because of his involvement with Radio GBX, for which he won two Wisconsin Broadcasters Association student awards.
According to Burns, higher education depends on what a student is looking for. For example, in the case of Raider, if a school doesn’t provide what they want, they can move to a different school. Money concerns are another reason students might drop out or if they have a family emergency. It is difficult to collect data on why a student leaves UWGB, and it is something Burns hopes they can improve upon in the future. Despite a seemingly high rate of students transferring out, UWGB also has a “steady pipeline” of students transferring in from other UW System schools, such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. They also come from technical colleges like Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC), with which UWGB has an articulation agreement, which more easily allows classes to transfer from one school to the other by offering similar materials. UWGB has the second-highest level of transfers coming in, behind the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
UWGB is continually improving its course offerings and providing more student life opportunities to enhance the experiences of students who attend the university. This even includes changing the Student Information System (SIS), which students use to manage their class schedule and update academic information, with new technologies, as some students may find SIS difficult to use. They are also working to improve the articulation agreements they have with other schools, such as NWTC and St. Norbert. Burns said it is worse for students to lose out on credits if they transfer to another school or take classes that don’t count towards their degree. They are also focusing on revising general education requirements to reduce the amount of classes students have to take and instead focus on developing core skills. They also want to provide more opportunities for internships and learning in the field. They also want to provide more capstone classes, which the university believes will increase student retention and success.
No matter whether a student finishes their degree at UWGB or not, the university is committed to the success of all students. Whether students are transferring in or transferring out, UWGB will make sure they have all the resources they need to succeed in obtaining their degrees.