Carolina’s Graduation Rate Highest Among UNC System Schools

Posted on Aug. 5, 2024

While four-year graduation rates at several UNC system schools are lagging, the rate at Carolina remains high, according to system President Peter Hans ’91.

Carolina’s four-year graduation rate is 82.7 percent, according to information provided by the UNC System. “That’s one area Chapel Hill excels in,” Hans said after a recent Board of Governors meeting. By comparison, N.C. State University’s graduation rate is 65.1 percent. Also trailing UNC is the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (58.2 percent), Appalachian State University (55.2 percent) and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (50.3 percent). None of the other system schools had rates above 45 percent, four were lower than 30 percent and one was lower than 20 percent.

From 2008 to 2021, the average college graduation rate in the U.S. was 60 percent at four-year schools, according to bestcolleges.com.

The board also announced Hans would receive a one-time incentive bonus of $453,720, payable to his retirement fund. The compensation is tied in part to on-time graduation rates for first-time and transfer undergraduate students, reducing education and related expenses per degree completed, reducing the average student loan debt of bachelor’s degree recipients as a percentage of per-capita income, and leadership and management.

The payment was announced after Board Chair Wendy Murphy said Hans had accepted a lower base annual salary than his predecessors when he was hired in 2020, with the opportunity for additional compensation tied to institutional performance and key leadership goals.