Graduation rates are poor measures of effectiveness?

Here's another interesting piece about how our views of higher education are still much too wedded to traditional models - http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44b01601.htm?=attw. We fixate on 6-year graduation rates, but in today's society, at least 28% of those who eventually graduate from college take longer than 6 years, and many of the 39% who have some college experience still gain significantly from even their limited higher education exposure. Furthermore, most of those who stretch out the process this far are from lower socio-economic groups.

The authors have a series of possible policy prescriptions as a consequence of this data, but for our small college purposes, the most interesting aspect to me is how we need to be more flexible in our understanding of what it is that our students are typically looking for in their college experience. Less and less is it the traditional "4-years in ivy-covered buildings."

Here, perhaps, is a better way of analyzing graduation rates - http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/09/2007091701n.htm.