Undergraduate Retention and Graduation Rates
The federal Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act, the National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES), and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data
System (IPEDS) commonly report enrollment and graduation rates as
of six years after initial entry. In the USF Retention Reporting System,
entering cohorts of First Time in College, Florida Community College
Transfers, and Other Transfers are tracked for ten academic years
to determine retention and graduation rates. The USF system originates
from a series of retention files built for the entire State University
System (SUS) by the Office of Information Resource Management of the
Division of Colleges and Universities in the Board of Education. These
SUS retention files are further augmented with pertinent USF data from a
series of files built from internal USF databases.
