Texas Tech University is in compliance with Federal Requirement 4.1

Texas Tech University uses a wide variety of criteria to evaluate student achievement, depending on the student’s college, department, and major. The university’s strategic planning annual assessment reports require colleges (areas) and departments (units) to report annually on retention rates, GPA, graduation rates, performance on state licensing and certification examinations, and, to the extent possible, on acceptance to graduate school and employment rates.

Programs that prepare students for state licensing or certification examinations are very concerned with the performance of students on those tests and compare their students’ performance with that of students in other schools in the state. State-wide data generally are made available to programs for this purpose, and low passing rates are definitely a cause for program changes to be considered.

Course completion data are available to department chairs and are used in their evaluation of faculty. Any faculty member who consistently has a high drop out rate in his or her classes is likely to have this noted in annual evaluations and also to be advised to try to determine what accounts for the relatively high drop rates. The same would apply to programs that have a high drop out rate (i.e., change of major or failure to complete the degree).

Job placement rates (and anecdotal responses from employers) are very important to applied and professional programs such as Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Mass Communications, and Human Sciences. The Career Center collects data on job placement for students who are registered with it. Some colleges and departments also maintain data on job placement for their graduates. These data provide a general idea of the relative effectiveness of individual programs, but the data are not as reliable as those from licensing examinations.

Individual college and department responses to this requirement support the above statements.