Seven years ago, Pierce College joined a national college-reform network called Achieving the Dream and began diving deeply into data about its students to try to figure out why so few students graduated after three years.
At Pierce — a state community-college district with three campuses — fewer than 19 percent of students were finishing a two-year associate degree after three years. Of those who placed into a low-level math course when they first entered the college, only 7 percent eventually received a degree.
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