Pamela Conner, a 43-year-old undergraduate student at Southern Methodist University, dropped out of college in 1981 after struggling to complete her first year.

Conner is a part of a large number of students in Texas who enroll in college but do not graduate four years later.

According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, only 48 percent of college freshmen in Texas are graduating four years later. The percentage increased by just four percent in six years.

Higher education officials in Texas said they have improved accessibility to colleges but are concerned about the low retention rates.

“We’re looking at the numbers, and we’re trying to figure out what to do to help students succeed,” Susan Brown, assistant commissioner for planning and accountability at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, said. “We’re trying to find the best practices for different groups of students and institutions because we want to retain as many students as possible.”

Conner said she enrolled in college because her high school teacher told her that she needed to go.

“I had a scholarship, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have parents or a support system to help me stay in,” she said.Conner said SMU might have helped her stay in school by reaching out to her when she began failing classes. SMU has a graduation rate of 71 percent. SMU’s rate is above the national rate but below the rates of many private institutions in other states.

Rose Johnson, in SMU’s registrar’s office, said they are tracking the retention rates but are not tracking the reasons that students withdraw from school.

Higher education officials said each institution should be recording the reasons students drop out of college because it is the only way to improve retention rates. If colleges don’t know why students are leaving school they won’t know how they could have helped them succeed.

According to the Texas Education Higher Coordinating Board, family pressures and conditions, the rising cost of tuition with financial aid not keeping up and more students working while attending college are common reasons why students drop out of college.

Texas already fallen behind other states in the percentage of college students enrolled and the number of students who graduate. Texas currently ranks 35 in educational ranking among the 50 states.

The University of Texas system spokesperson, Cile Spelce, said the University of Texas institutions are also concerned about the higher education graduation rates in Texas. The University of Texas institutions are using their new authority over tuition rates to experiment with pricing strategies to encourage students to take more classes and graduate in a timely manner.

The strategies include rate pricing that ties the cost for all full-time students at 14 semester credit hours, giving students a financial incentive to take more than 14 hours since there’s no added cost. Tuition rebates are also being used to return a portion of tuition to the student if they take and complete a full course load (30 semester credit hours; 15 hours per semester) during an academic year.

“We are still in the early developments of tackling this issue. We want to raise the retention rates at our nine institutions up to the level of some the private universities and colleges in Texas,” she said. “When you compare the retention rates of a public university to that of a private one, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Their rates are much higher.”

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board created a program called “Closing the Gaps by 2015.” It is designed to help public and private colleges in Texas catch up to the education levels of other states by the year 2015. In an effort to help “close the gap,” the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board now requires private institutions like SMU to report their retention rates in order to continue receiving the Texas Equalization financial aid Grant for their students.

“We’re calculating numbers and getting data to provide to colleges and universities so they know where they stand with their students. Then it’s their responsibility to talk to their students,” Brown said.