In the New York Times, David Leonhardt and Sahil Chinoy write about college graduation rates, noting that in the U.S., “About one in three students who enroll in college never earn a degree.” Interestingly, “Schools with similar students often have very different graduation rates. This suggests that the problem isn’t the students — it’s the schools.”

The authors (with help from the Urban Institute) take 368 colleges in the U.S., estimate what the expected graduation rate would be at each college based on its student demographics, and compare those expected graduation rates to their actual rates.

We found that the list of top-performing colleges — those that exceed their expected six-year graduation rate — is diverse in almost every way. It spans colleges with expected graduation rates from 18 percent to 80 percent. It includes private colleges, like the University of La Verne, in Southern California, as well as historically black colleges like North Carolina Central and Fayetteville State. It also includes big public universities like San Diego State, New Hampshire, Virginia Tech and several branches of the State University of New York.

The story gives some ideas about why some schools do better than others at graduating students, including structure (like “defined academic paths”), on-campus living, and funding for higher education.

Washington looks good in this exercise. The Washington institutions included in the piece are Eastern Washington University, University of Washington, Washington State University, and Western Washington University. EWU’s graduation rate is 8 percentage points better than expected, UW’s is 5 percentage points better than expected, WSU’s is 3 percentage points better than expected, and WWU’s is the same as expected. EWU is one of the 15 top-performing large schools and UW is one of the 15 top-performing largest schools.

But although students at Washington’s universities are earning degrees at higher than expected rates, the actual graduation rates still need to improve. Graduating is important. As the Washington Roundtable has written, over the next several years, “The majority of job opportunities—particularly those that will support upward mobility and good quality of life—will be filled with workers who have postsecondary education or training.”