ECTC sees another increase in graduation rate

Elizabethtown Community and Technical College is continuing a multi-year streak of increasing the college’s graduation rate.

“You know, it’s certainly representative of the quality of the students and the community, but really indicative of a lot of hard work by our faculty and staff to keep pushing themselves to find new and better ways to engage with our students, get them involved in the teaching and learning process,” said ECTC President and CEO Dr. Juston Pate.

ECTC says its graduation rate for the 2023-2024 academic year was 59.5 percent, which is an increase of about 10 percent from the previous year and about 21.5 percent from the 2018-2019 academic year.

ECTC also saw growth with its retention rate, with 65.2 percent of first-time freshmen returning from 2023 to 2024. That’s up 2.6 percent from the previous year and 15.9 percent from five years ago.

Pate says the retention rate and the graduation rate go hand in hand.

“What it’s really talking about is fulfilling that mission of adding value to our students’ lives and then returning that value back out into the community,” Pate said. “We’re helping students connect with a goal and a dream and then helping them achieve that in a timely fashion, which puts them into this community and this workforce in a much more timely fashion, and we all need that.”

Spring semester classes begin January 13. Contact the ECTC admissions office for more information.