Data and Interpretation

Two trends noted in the last self study continue. As a percentage of our majors, female and non-white students continue to increase while white males decrease. A program that was once almost 100% male is now 52% female. Gains in minority population are primarily in Hispanic students (21.6%) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (12%). African American students have declined slightly as a percentage of our majors (7%) as have whites (46.6%). This profile closely parallels the University as a whole. Our proportion of women is slightly less then the University as a whole, but much closer than one would expect by examining employment patterns in criminal justice. Hispanics constitute a somewhat higher proportion of our students and Asian/Pacific Islanders a somewhat lower proportion than they do in the general University population. In general, our Division appears to reflect both the population served and the University as a whole. The vast majority of our students continue to come from the Sacramento and adjacent foothill areas. Approximately one-third are from the San Francisco Bay area. About 10% come from the remaining areas of California and only about two percent from outside the state. Fifteen percent of our undergraduate majors are part-time; significantly below the 25% figure for the University. Although the proportion of our students that are admitted as first-time freshmen has risen over the past few years to 38% in the 2003-2004 academic year, these students continue to leave the University and the major at a higher rate than transfer students.

An examination of the retention and graduation rates for majors in comparison to the university overall discloses a slightly lower rate for criminal justice majors. About 11% of entering freshmen and 7% or transfer students declaring a criminal justice major eventually change their major, while remaining in the university. Adding these figures puts the Criminal Justice retention rate at five years approximately equal to the University total. It appears that this change of major phenomenon does not entirely explain the disparity between graduation rates for all students and for Criminal Justice students. First-time freshmen lag the University rate by 10%, and transfers by half that. Although change of major explains virtually all the disparity in transfer students, it explains only about half the disparity for entering freshmen. We suspect some of this disparity will disappear with the better advising instituted by the Division. We also suspect that the major draws some freshmen who lack maturity, a clear perception of the nature of our requirements and strong academic interest. As a field that has been widely romanticized and misrepresented in the media, we will likely continue to draw such students. We do note that the trend of disproportionately losing female students noted six years ago has ceased. As with the University as a whole, our highest drop out rates are among African-Americans, particularly males, though our numbers closely align with the overall numbers for the University.

As has long been the pattern, the division continues to issue a lower proportion of A grades and a higher proportion of B and C grades than the College or University as a whole. The contrast is particularly apparent when examining the disparity in lower division grades. The College as a whole issues 48% A grades in lower division courses versus our 17%. Although the disparity in upper division and graduate courses is only half as great, the pattern persists. The GPAs of our majors are very slightly below those of either the College or the University, .09 on a 4.0 scale below the University mean for undergraduates. We draw no conclusions about our students' academic performance or competencies from this data, because we lack evidence that a similar standard is being used for grading in different Departments and Colleges. In fact, we know from examination of faculty behavior in our own Division, that grades are as reflective of faculty expectations and philosophy as student performance. If one assumes that grades of B or higher reflect above average performance, our Division continues to issue excessively high grades and the College and University as a whole do so to an even greater degree. Historically, the combined A and B grades have been about 70% for the college of Health and Human Services and about 60% for the University.

Using the WPE pass rate as one standard measure reveals that our native freshmen pass at exactly the same rate as similar students in both the College and the University. Our pass rate for transfer students is one percent higher than that for the College and four percent lower than the University as a whole. The proportion of our majors on academic probation is identical to the University total, 16%. Although the graduation rate within the major is lower for our majors than for the University, our pattern is similar to other large majors such as Psychology and Communications Studies.

Overall, our majors appear to mirror the students of the University as a whole in demographic characteristics, geographic origin, academic preparation and academic performance.