Graduate Student Success

Trinity University offers six masters-level graduate programs, one in Accounting, two in Health Care Administration, and three in Education. All of Trinity's graduate programs identify and evaluate goals and outcomes for multiple measures of student achievement, including time to degree, completion rates, and job placement or certification exam pass rates. 

Time to Degree

Each graduate program has a target time to degree based on credit hours and degree requirements. Table 1 shows the target time to degree for each graduate program. 

Table 1 - Time-To-Degree Targets and Actuals by Program

Table 2 shows the number of graduates over the last three years and the percentage of graduates in each year that graduated in the target timeframe. For each of the last three years, all programs except the Health Care Administration (Executive) program had 100% of graduates complete their degrees in the target timeframe. The cohort of Health Care Administration (Executive) students who graduated in 2023 started their program in 2020. This cohort was particularly impacted by the pandemic because all students enrolled in the Executive program are full-time employees in the healthcare industry.

Table 2 – Number of Graduates and Percentage of Graduates who Completed in Preferred Time by Graduation Year

Completion Rate

Each graduate program has a target completion rate of 95%, except for the Master of Arts in Teaching, which has a target of 80%. This lower target reflects the program’s emphasis on vocational fit – when students are counseled into other roles in education or into related fields such as non-profits, counseling, or social work, that is considered a successful outcome. 

The most recent cohorts of the Accounting, Health Care Administration, School Leadership, and Teaching programs all met their target completion rates. The Health Care Administration (Executive) program and the School Psychology program did not meet their targets (see Table 3). However, because the programs are small, only one student in the Health Care Administration (Executive) program did not complete, and only two students in the School Psychology program did not complete.

Table 3 – Completion Rates by Program and Cohort Year

Job Placement/Certification Exam Pass Rates

Each graduate program has a target job placement or certification exam pass rate. The School Psychology program and both Health Care Administration programs have a target job placement rate of 100% within 6 months of graduation and the Accounting program has a target job placement rate of 90% at graduation. For all four programs, the last three cohorts to graduate had 100% job placement rates (see Table 4).

Table 4 – Job Placement Rates by Program and Graduation Year

The School Leadership program has a target certification exam pass rate of 95% and the Teaching program has a target pass rate of 100%. In the most recent cohort of graduates, the Teaching program had a certification exam pass rate of 94% on the Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities (PPR) exam and a 100% pass rate on the content exams, whereas the School Leadership program had a 57% pass rate for the Principal as Instructional Leader (PAIL) exam and an 85% pass rate for the Performance Assessment for School Leaders (PASL) exam (see Table 5).

Table 5 – Certification Exam Pass Rates by Program and Graduation Year

This year’s School Leadership outcomes are unusually low. They were impacted by a number of factors that led to deviating from the program’s expected timeline and process for exam preparation (these included a student death in the cohort and limited test availability at state testing centers). 

In response to these outcomes, the program will offer an intensive test prep session for the PAIL in the initial summer term to all students as part of program preparation, as well as to the six students who did not pass the exam on their first attempt (at no additional cost) to help them prepare for their next attempt.