Texas Schools Lag in On-Time Graduation Rates

Recently, Money College highlighted a number of schools that are bucking the trend toward ever-longer undergraduate degree programs. But for every school bucking a trend, many more exemplify it. That's certainly the case for the select 25 schools -- a number of them in Texas -- that wound up at rock-bottom on a recent list of the schools with the lowest four-year graduation rates in the nation.

The list, compiled by CBS's MoneyWatch.com contributor Lynn O'Shaughnessy using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, showed that more than a dozen of the worst 25 schools for on-time graduation actually boasted a four-year graduation rate of zero percent. Beyond that, the list fell especially hard on state universities in Texas: Seven of the schools with the 25 lowest on-time graduation rates are in the Lone Star State.

"Clearly Texas is doing something wrong," writes MoneyWatch contributor Lynn O'Shaughnessy, adding later in the piece: "What these schools have excelled at is producing students who end up leaving college with no degree, but lots of student debt, and that's disgraceful."