Distorted Statistics on Graduation Rates

In this viewpoint from The Chronicle of Higher Education (may require registration), Paul Attewell and David E. Lavin argue that the way colleges and universities measure and report "graduate rates" is archaic and creates needless, negative misperceptions:

We can cling to an increasingly unrepresentative image of undergraduate life and document through statistical measures that universities filled with working-class and minority students do not live up to that privileged benchmark. Or we can acknowledge the emergence of a system of mass higher education and develop policies that recognize that collegegoing has profoundly changed.