A DEGREE WITH A PROMISE

Officials at the University of Missouri-Rolla are confident they provide an excellent education. So confident, in fact, that they are willing to provide a guarantee of sorts.

Starting this fall, incoming freshmen are being offered the UMR Promise: Do your part, and you will get a good job offer within six months of graduation. If not, you will get up to one more year of schooling for free.

Jobs typically come easily to UMR graduates, most of whom are engineers. Fewer than 4 percent of UMR graduates fail to get jobs. But the Promise has another aim, which is to help its students improve their own marketability through the conditions that must be met as part the job promise.

Students who sign up must participate in campus organizations and serve as an officer for at least one organization, participate in career-building career-planning activities, look for a job and maintain at least a C-plus grade-point average.

Whether or not the promise boosts enrollment at UMR, which has plunged from more than 7,000 students in the early 1980s to fewer than 5,000 now, the policy is a good way for the university to serve its customers, its students, parents, taxpayers and employers of its graduates.

Like UMR, other universities are making bold guarantees that their students will be well-qualified for the work force. It is a welcome development for higher education across the nation.