STATE COLLEGE ENROLLMENT AT RECORD HIGH - WV At Bottom In Graduation Rates

(11/18/2010)
There is a record enrollment at West Virginia's public universities and colleges, hitting 95,000 students for the second straight year.

Enrollment reached 68,453 at the state's 11 public four-year colleges and universities, and 26,665 at the state's two-year institutions.

Glenville State College had a 6.2 percent enrollment increase, the largest from the previous year.

While record numbers are entering college in the Mountain State, West Virginia has near the lowest college graduation rate in the nation.

Several schools are only graduating 20 percent of their students.

West Virginia needs to at least reach the national average of 51 percent of adults having two or four-year college degrees.

With current graduation rates, the state will be nearly 45,000 degrees short of that goal by 2018, a Legislative Oversight Committee on Education Accountability was told.

Graduation rates are from 15 percent at Bluefield State College to 59 percent at West Virginia University.