The University of Wisconsin System released this year’s academic “snapshot,” which highlighted goals they have met and where they have come up short.
The UW System Accountability Report for 2009-10 came out Monday, along with reports from each university in the system, and records the system’s goals in The Growth Agenda. The Board of Regents will listen to the annual presentation at their meeting this Thursday and will discuss how to address some of the issues the reports raised.
According to the new report, UW undergraduates complete the fewest on-campus credits needed for a degree. At 122 credits, it is the lowest in the system.
Having students take fewer credits frees up classroom space and speeds the time to graduation, according to the report. The UW System average for on-campus credits completed is 132, and the average number of credits to completion at UW in 2007-08 stayed the same at 122.
UW Director of Academic Planning and Analysis Jocelyn Milner said the average does not take into account the credits UW students usually come in with, including Advanced Placement credits and retro-credits, which students can get for language classes taken in high school.
“[UW] is the best in the system because students tend to come in to [UW] well-prepared with fairly strong aspiration,” Milner said, whose office collected the data used in the UW portion of the report.
While UW did not receive grades specific to the institution, the UW System graded itself on a system of pluses and minuses.
The system received a number of plusses and plus/minuses, and only giving themselves one minus in energy use. UW, however, has made strides in that area.
UW System fell shy of its goal of reducing energy by 10 percent in campus facilities by fiscal year 2008, according to the UW System report.
According to UW System spokesperson David Giroux, the Accountability Reports are a report card the system gives itself which tries to be as open and honest as possible.
“Even when we know some of the data will point to shortfalls, we publish the data and are honest about the findings, especially if we’re going to solve some of these problems and work towards a solution,” Giroux said.
He said the reports show the complexity of some of the problems the system faces.
Giroux said on the surface, it appears that the UW System is meeting its goal of graduation rates over a six-year period, however the system is not meeting its graduation goal for targeted minorities.
The report followed a group of students who entered the system in 2003 and followed this group for six years to come up with the rates. The goal was to have 65 percent of all those students graduate, along with 65 percent of students from each ethnic group.
According to the report, the lowest graduation rate over the six-year period was blacks, at 31.3 percent. The graduation rates for Southeastern Asian students, American Indian and Latino students also fell below their goal.
