By Eunice Lee/The Star-Ledger
NEWARK — Essex County College President Gale Gibson is known to march from office to office with a poster-sized board under her arm.
With crushed corners and tears, the well-worn board makes one thing clear: ECC ranks at the bottom of New Jersey’s 19 county colleges as far as graduation and retention rates.
Gibson — who was appointed interim college president in April and confirmed as president Oct. 15 by the board of trustees — has made boosting ECC’s rank her top mission and has laid out an ambitious five-year plan.
“There’s no place for Essex County College to go but up,” Gibson said in an interview. “I see the college in a better place in five years and if it isn’t I shouldn’t be sitting in this chair. It cannot remain where it is right now.”
The numbers on the ranking chart paint a stark picture: 5 percent of full-time ECC students who began in fall 2007 graduate within three years and just 46 percent of students who began in fall 2009 returned in fall 2010.
By comparison at Hudson County Community College, 57 percent of students returned during the same period and the graduation rate was 12 percent. Meanwhile, Passaic County Community College’s retention rate is 66 percent and its graduation rate is 9 percent. Cumberland County College topped the chart — which also included transfer rates and part time retention — with 34 percent graduation and 67 percent retention rates.
More>>
