The workplace demand for job applicants holding higher education degrees has climbed steadily for several decades. During the early 1970s, nearly three-quarters of all jobs nationwide had no higher education requirement. We’re now approaching the flip-side of that.
Within the next few years, an estimated 65 percent of jobs in the U.S. will require post-high school education and training. The 2020 forecast for Hawaii sets that bar slightly higher.
Given the ever-evolving workplace’s rising educational demands, the University of Hawaii’s strides in stepping up four-year graduation rates are encouraging. Between 2010 and 2018, the flagship campus, UH-Manoa, nearly doubled its overall four-year rate, rising to 35 percent.
Especially bright are gains among Native Hawaiian and Filipino students. Since 2010, when just 10 percent of first-time freshmen of Hawaiian ancestry picked up a bachelor’s degree within four years, the “on-time” figure has tripled — topping 32 percent this year. During the same time frame, the figure for Filipino students more than doubled, to 38 percent.
Due to commonplace setbacks such as inability to register for required courses, academic course credits lost in transfer from one school to another, and struggles to cover costs tied to enrollment, in recent years, national education policy experts have often used benchmarks of six years to earn a bachelor’s degree.
UH-Manoa’s most recent six-year rate — 58 percent in 2016 — nearly matches the national average of 59 percent at public institutions.
In-state tuition at Hawaii’s sole public option for higher education is a relative bargain — $2,700 less than the national average for public universities — but the high cost of living here is a hefty counterweight. UH does right by undergraduates and the local jobs market by continuing to step on the gas to further raise its four-year grad rate.
A key to success is helping freshmen tackle university-related challenges that sideline a large portion of them at many schools. Nationwide, an estimated 70 percent of freshmen return as sophomores. Here, too, UH-Manoa is seeing progress as nearly 80 percent of last year’s freshmen returned as sophomores this fall, marking an historic high for the campus.
Gains in retention rates are prodded by programs that help keep students on track. In the lineup is an effective online degree audit program that provides feedback on academic progress, facilitates student-adviser communication, and helps forecast a graduation date. During their first two years at UH-Manoa, every student must see an adviser before registering for classes.
Programs that prep younger teens for college, meanwhile, are helping to increase initial enrollment among Filipinos, Native Hawaiians and other under-
represented groups. Diversity among college students is important, to better build a more-reflective, higher-educated work force for multicultural Hawaii. This fall, UH-Manoa welcomed its largest-
ever freshman class — nearly 2,210 incoming students, with the in-state makeup topping 60 percent.
Also showing promise are partnerships such Makalapua Na‘auao, a UH-Kamehameha Schools team-up through which about 150 Native Hawaiians received scholarships at UH’s four-year campuses starting in 2016, along with peer mentoring, tutoring and counseling.
Within six years of graduating from high school, only about 14 percent of Native Hawaiians go on to earn a two- or four-year college degree, or a trade certificate. In an effort to see that figure rise, Kamehameha Schools is forging partnerships with universities, the state Department of Education, and other community entities.
UH-Manoa’s strategies for increasing retention and graduation outcomes while shrinking achievement gaps among under-represented groups appears to be working. Slowly. The numbers are not jaw-dropping. For example, during the 2017-2018 year, 268 Filipino students and 283 Native Hawaiian students graduated in four or fewer years. Still, progress is in the works, and that is heartening to see.
