By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- Just about half the students at N.C. Central University do not graduate within six years.

It's an unacceptable statistic, says NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms. But the university leader says he's starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel and is hopeful that the graduation rate will soon start to improve.

"We're beginning now to see an uptick in the persistence rate," said Nelms Wednesday during a wide-ranging discussion this week with the editorial board of The Herald-Sun. "The increase may not seem like much, but there's a definite improvement, and that's encouraging."

Persistence rates measure how many students total return from the fall semester to the spring. Unlike retention rates -- which look at how many first-time, full-time students return for the second year -- persistence rates include first-year students, sophomores, juniors and seniors.

In the two years that he's been at the helm of NCCU, Nelms said the school's persistence rate has gone from around 76 percent to nearly 81 percent.

"If you can sustain that kind of increase," the chancellor said, "then you can have real improvement [in the graduation rate]. And that is our goal. Our goal is, and should be, that all students graduate in four years."

That goal may be far off; currently, only around 22 percent of Central students graduate within four years. And its six-year graduation rate lags behind a number of other campuses in the UNC system. For comparison, the six-year graduation rate at UNC Chapel Hill, which is the highest in the state university system, is around 85 percent while the four-year graduation rate is around 72 percent.

Nelms said he has been strenuously pushing the importance of graduation since he arrived at NCCU.

"I've been telling students, this has been my refrain, if graduation isn't your destination, then don't come. If graduation isn't your destination, then leave. I've been very consistent with that," he said. "We need to raise expectations, for ourselves and for our students."

Nelms attributed the increase in the persistence rate to a combination of factors, including raising those expectations as well as raising admissions requirements, following guidelines from UNC General Administration. Students, he said, are coming to campus more equipped for college.

"We've spent a lot of energy on this," Nelms said. "And we're beginning to see it pay off."