College's Student Attrition Low Compared to Average in Nation

Student mortality, the academic term for withdrawal before graduation, is more than ten percent lower at Harvard than for the average large men's college.

About half the students enrolled in American colleges and universities withdraw before graduation, according to gross national averages; men's colleges of over 1,000 lose an average of 37 percent.

No accurate figures for the College have been available since the war, but a survey of the years 1929 to 1941, conducted by Dean Leighton's office, shows that student attrition is decreasing steadily.

Of the Class of 1941, for example, 74.4 percent graduated after four years, as against 65.6 percent for the Class of 1929. This decrease in mortality over a 13-year period has continued, according to Dean Leighton.

The percentage of men whose connections are severed, tabulated for individual classes over a four-year period, has remained a steady nine or ten percent. Every class has some men who do not graduate in the usual four years, but who remain enrolled in the College to graduate at a later date. This percentage varies between four and eight.

Adding these to the other survivors, the College's present mortality rate looks even lower. Anyway Harvard men have less to worry about than students in co-educational institutions with enrollments of over 1,000, where mortality averages 61.1 percent.

Actually, large men's colleges are the most secure of all institutions as far as student mortality is concerned. Small men's colleges have a much larger percentage of attrition: 55.7.