The Boston Globe's James Vanzis reports on the miserable graduation rates among former students of Boston public schools who attend public colleges. (Those who attend private colleges have much higher grad rates.) Only 21 percent of the 150 Boston students who enrolled at UMass Boston in fall of 2001 got a degree within six years, and things are even worse at community colleges:
Bunker Hill Community College graduated 14.2 percent of its 155 Boston students, while Roxbury Community College had a graduation rate of 5.9 percent for its 101 Boston enrollees, according to new data released by the Boston Private Industry Council at the Globe's request.
The data may be big news today, but CommonWealth's Michael Jonas reported on almost identical (that is, identically poor) graduation rates at Massachusetts community colleges in our Spring 2007 issue. And it was in December 2006 that Boston Mayor Tom Menino charged that the state's community colleges "are failing our students and failing our businesses."