Stephen L. DesJardins Dennis A. Ahlburg Brian P. McCall The authors are grateful for the generous resource grant provided by the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute and would like to thank ACT, Inc., for the Act Assessment/Stu- dent Profile Questionnaire data. Also, we would like to thank Michael McPherson and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft. Stephen L. DesJardins is assistant professor, Planning, Policy, and Leadership Stud- ies, The University of Iowa; Dennis A. Ahlburg is professor, Industrial Relations Center, University of Minnesota; Brian P. McCall is associate professor, Industrial Relations Center, University of Minnesota. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 73, No. 5 (September/October 2002) Copyright © 2002 by The Ohio State University Introduction Graduation, especially timely graduation, is an in- creasingly important policy issue, and for good reason. College gradu- ates earn twice as much as high-school graduates and six times as much as high-school dropouts (Murphy & Welch, 1993); and their wealth is two and one-half times that of a high-school graduate and five times that of a high-school dropout (Diaz-Jiminez, Quadrini, & Rios-Rull, 1997). In addition to these financial rewards, the spouses of college graduates are more educated and their children do better in school and are less likely to get into trouble with the police (Jencks & Edlin, 1995; Murphy & Welch, 1993). Despite the obvious rewards, graduation from U.S. col- leges and universities is far from assured (DeBrock, Hendricks, & Koenker, 1996). Lederman (1991) reported that of all students enrolled in Division-I schools in 1984, only 48% had graduated by August 1989. In the data used in this study, 41% of the entering class of 1991 had graduated within six years of enrollment. Of these graduates, 88% grad- uated without any interruption (henceforth “timely graduates”). The fact that only about one-half of college attendees graduate is A Temporal Investigation of Factors Related to Timely Degree Completion