Closing the Gaps: UT-Austin Conferring 15% More Undergrad Degrees Since 2000

By Sam Bohmfalk in Promote & Protect on August 12, 2011 at 2:12 pm | No Comments

In October 2000, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board released Closing the Gaps, a plan to address education inequalities within the state, and between Texas and other states. This is the second in a four-part series analyzing UT-Austin’s progress toward reaching Closing the Gaps goals.

The number of undergraduate degrees conferred at UT-Austin on a yearly basis increased 14.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, from 7,803 to 8,952, according to data from the UT Statistical Handbook.

While year-to-year enrollment increases have certainly helped, improved graduation rates are by far the main reason UT is conferring more degrees.

A comparison of the six-year graduation rate for students from the 1994 cohort (the last available data when Closing the Gaps was conceived) versus students from the 2004 cohort (the last year for which data is currently available) show six-year graduation rates are up 17.9 percent from 68.7 percent to 81 percent.

The increase in degrees conferred indicates that UT is making progress toward the Closing the Gaps in Success goal of awarding 210,000 undergraduate degrees, certificates (BACs), and other identifiable student successes from institutions of higher education by 2015.

In 2000, just over 116,000 such degrees and certificates were awarded, meaning an additional 94,000 need to be awarded on a yearly basis by 2015 to meet the goal. In 2010, 176,000 BACs were awarded—slightly ahead of target. The state must still award another 34,000 more BACs a year to meet the 2015 goal.

Undergraduate Degrees Conferred by Year at UT, 2000-2010