It's hard to put a good spin on a report that, when reported in a single sentence, gives the impression than fewer than a quarter of Augusta State University students ever receive a college diploma.

The good news is that single sentence isn't just misleading. It's flat wrong.

The report, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, looked at incoming freshmen across the country from the year 2001, the latest available, and then checked back six years later to see how many had graduated.

The result for ASU isn't pretty. The report says just 23 percent of those students received a diploma, the remainder presumably dropping out and scrambling for low-wage jobs.

"My reaction to reports such as this is always to wince," says Ray Whiting, ASU's assistant vice president for institutional effectiveness.

Fortunately there's more to the story -- specifically, what's left out in compiling that discouraging statistic. Looking at the bigger picture makes ASU look much better.

For example, points out ASU Communications Director Kathy Schofe, "It is not 23 percent of ASU students who graduate, but 23 percent of those students who started ASU as freshmen. We have an awful lot of students who start somewhere else and then transfer in to Augusta State and graduate -- but they are not included in this statistic."

In fact, Jackie Stewart, the ASU director of institutional research, says that of all students attending the school as part of a "cohort group" -- in other words, all attending in a particular year -- a much-higher 82 percent received bachelor degrees within six years.

The lowball 23 percent number also doesn't include students who attend ASU as freshmen and then transfer out of state -- say, to USC Aiken's nursing program -- or to any school that isn't part of the University System of Georgia.

The latter schools include the significant number of private or out-of-state colleges that recently have located campuses in our area, including Troy, Michigan State and Phoenix. If a student leaves ASU and later receives a degree from any of those schools, he or she is counted as a "dropout" in these statistics.

Even with these mitigating factors, clearly there's a problem of success with incoming freshmen at ASU. But that's less a symptom of failure for ASU than a demonstration of larger issues addressed by ASU's admissions policies.

The school is not a "open enrollment" campus, taking any student who walks through the door no matter how unprepared. But because there is no University System of Georgia junior college in Augusta, ASU accepts as freshmen lower-achieving students who could qualify only under two-year college standards.

Obviously, such students will be less prepared for the rigors of a four-year college -- and fewer of them will stick it out and receive an ASU degree. Augusta State could instantly improve its graduation statistics either by rejecting those students altogether, or by lowering its standards for all students and thereby churn out more diplomas.

"We are not willing to just pass students through to increase our attractiveness in the market," Dr. Whiting rightly says. "We will not go that route."

They shouldn't have to -- especially not to groom the university's statistics just to make them look better. We already know that no statistics can properly measure the value of ASU to the thousands of students educated at the university each year.

No single simple statistic should damage Augusta State's effort to improve our community, one diploma at a time.

The graduations statistics raise concerns, but they do not offer the final grade on Augusta State's work to improve the community, one diploma at a time.