Draft 1- Feature

Returning to the dorms for my second semester at Eugene Lang College, I found that out of less than sixty students, mostly at Lang, who had lived on my floor in the Fall, at least five, one of them my suitemate, had left the New School, either transferring or taking a leave of absence. More were gone by the Fall. Meanwhile, the number of students I met who had transferred in seemed high as well. 

As time went on, it started to seem that Lang is truly an untraditional school and that the odds of finding a student that started and finished at Lang within a standard four years of college.

In March, I made the decision to join the ranks of others before me and I too chose to leave Lang College. This prompted me to wonder if I just happened to be around people apt to leave or if Lang actually does have an unusually high rate of transfers (in and out), leaves of absence and drop-outs than a typical college. But that of course presumes that Lang is a typical college, a notion that would probably not hold up under much scrutiny.

Statistics are not widely released concerning leaves of absence, but freshman retention rates and graduation rates are available.

According to 1990’s Student Right-To-Know and Campus Security Act, all colleges and Universities that receive the benefits of Federal Student Aid Programs must make available the statistics about freshman retention rates and graduation rates. These statistics are seen as helpful to prospective students in evaluating their college decision.

The information required by Student Right-To-Know is available via the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which has a database on their website.

By the Fall of 2009, Eugene Lang College lost 21% of the full-time, Bachelor degree-seeking students who entered in Fall 2008. That statistic is high compared to most other local private universities.

In the same year, NYU lost only nine percent of their first time freshman. Sarah Lawrence College, often sited as a less urban version of Lang, lost 18%. Uptown, Ivy League Columbia University’s undergraduate division boasts a loss of only two percent, while downtown, Pace University lost 23%, the only local secular private college with a higher acceptance rate than Lang, at 78% as compared to 63% measured in 2010.

According to the National Center for Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis, a non-profit educational policy research organization, the national average for retention rates for first time students, as measured in 2008 was 74.7%, slightly lower than Lang. New York State on the other hand, measured 80.8%, a bit higher than Lang’s statistic.

However, students do not necessarily chose to leave school immediately after their freshman year.

Allyn Morse came to Lang in the Fall of 2009 as a first time, full time freshman, and she did return in Fall 2010, but not without incident. Last year, Morse did not return to Lang for the Spring semester.

“At the time, I decided to leave and never return to school,” Morse said. However, the months she spent at home were not what she hoped. Most of her friends were off at school and she got tired of hanging out with the same three people.

She moved into an East Village apartment in the summer and resumed taking classes in a variety of departments including writing, psychology and the arts. It wasn’t until February that Morse recognized how dissatisfied she still was.

“Realizing that I never wanted to go to college in the first place, that I hate New York and a lot of parts of living on the East coast, feeling like I wasn’t getting much of an education for the amount of money my family was spending [is what made me want to leave Lang],” Morse explained. “Looking back at last year I know I felt the same way I do now, only I was better at masking it, to myself, and convincing myself that I was happy even though I was barely satisfied.”

Morse is moving home to Los Angeles where she wants to find her own place once she gets a job and makes enough money to pay rent. She plans to pursue an acting career and has her parents behind her.

Morse doesn’t plan to return to school at any point but figures that it’s a possibility later in life.

This time, she has more friends that she knows will be in California, some of them are even graduating from Lang in May. What is more, Morse is not the only one of her friends to change course midway through their education.

“A large portion of my friends have either taken leave or left permanently the place where they originally decided to attend in twelfth grade,” Morse said. “The number surprises me because I was pretty sure that everyone had found a place where they were happy and settled, but enough people have left or reconsidered their plans to make me feel otherwise.”

At the same time, Morse only knows one other student at Lang that’s transferred out.

Morse’s case illustrates why graduation rates, which are measured within a six-year span, are a another important measure of a University’s overall success at keeping students in addition to freshman retention rates.

According to IPEDS, at Lang, the overall graduation rate for students who entered college in 2003 is at 66%, again lower than all other schools exempting Pace University.

NYU’s overall graduation rate, as calculated from students entering in 2003, is 86%. Sarah Lawrence College and has an overall graduation rate of 75%. Columbia is again the most successful with a 93% graduation rate and Pace University the least with an overall graduation rate of 58%. In this case, the more accolades a University has, the better their graduation and retention rates are.

In 2008, using data collected by IPEDS, NCHEMS determined that the national average graduation rate for students seeking Bachelor’s Degrees within a six year period was 55.9%, which Lang is above. For New York State, the average graduation rate was 58.2%. That means that 63791 out of 109530 who entered in Fall 2002 graduated by Spring 2008.

 In the United States, the lowest graduation rate in 2008 occurred in Alaska where only 22.1% of students completed their degree within six years. The highest graduation rate was Massachusetts where 69.1% of students received their degree.

New School students come in with a greater tendency than many schools to be nontraditional in some way. At NYU, 76% of students who came to the university in 2009 were “full-time, first-time” students according to IPEDS. At Lang, on the other hand, only 49%, less than half of the students that came to the school met this qualification.

Lang’s “transfer out” rate is calculated to be at 16%, not all schools are required to give this statistic, but in the case of the New School, it seems to bode more favorably than the 66% graduation rate.

Compared to most other undergraduate institutions in the area, at 19% Lang has a higher percentage of students over 25. Columbia is not far behind at 16% but NYU has eight percent and Sarah Lawrence has only four percent.

It is important here to consider that IPEDS’s data is inclusive of a variety of calibers of academic institution. 

Grace Vineberg spent two years at Lang, and is now a junior at NYU.

When she first came to the New School, Vineberg took advantage of the opportunity to take a variety of courses.

“I really wanted a liberal arts education that would allow me to try all sorts of different subjects,” she said. “I was interested in the freedom that Lang gave its students and the professors I had met.”

Along the way, Vineberg developed an interest in the discipline known as Food Studies, an academic approach to learning about cuisine through scientific, anthropological, historical and sociological lenses, with a little cooking in the mix.

“Cooking has always been a really big part of my life and after taking the writing the essay class about food writing with Scott Korb at Lang, I realized that I wanted to know more about food in an academic setting,” she said. “I took a great food studies class in general studies at the New School but wasn't satisfied with the limited number of food studies classes that they offer each semester.”

She had heard about NYU’s Food Studies program, and transferred to follow her interests.

Lang is limited in the programs that it can offer. Compared to the TK undergrads at NYU, Lang has TK. Because of this, the school’s capacity to offer programs that satisfy a variety of students’ niche interests are limited. Not counting the design your own major program, Lang offers a mere thirteen majors. NYU offers TKTK.

The issue with Lang may not be the actual school, but the genuinely unique make-up of its student body. It is not every High School senior that’s going to be attracted to what Lang has to offer, and it may be possible that the students it attracts are more likely to be nontraditional. TK BACK THIS UP.

In spite of many factors that compel students to leave, Lang can be in important step for even the students who choose to leave.

“I'm really glad that I spent my first two years of college at Lang so that I could figure out what I wanted to focus on on my own terms,” said Vineberg. 

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