I think it's great that the authors studied this problem and that schools are thinking about ways to increase their graduation rates, but at the same time I am a little puzzled. When I went to college I looked up how many credits I needed to graduate and took classes that got me that number of credits. I also looked up the requirements for my major and the other requirements (distributional requirements, language requirement, etc.) and made sure I satisfied those too. I don't recall that my college made any particular efforts to make sure that I knew this information, other than publishing it in the Bulletin.
I can understand how graduation could be tough for students who have financial issues, which I was privileged not to have. And I can understand that students could run into problems because of family circumstances, or health issues, or something like that. But as to just not knowing how to graduate, I mean . . . seriously? What is up with these students? You find out how many classes and what kind of classes, and you take them.
19
My sense is that this task (figuring out what is needed to meet every single graduation requirement) has gotten more difficult and then, getting into those courses has gotten tougher. Required courses get full quickly, and sometimes that course is a prerequisite for another course. Students face gen ed requirements, requirements specific to their college, writing requirements, language requirements. It really is tough to wrap one's mind around it all.
At my university, it is quite common for students' accounts to get put on hold unexpectedly, which makes it impossible to register, further increasing the odds of getting shut out of a required course. Rules change with great frequency and often are not posted or explained clearly. Deadlines that one never knew existed get missed. The university's response? Too bad so sad.
Generally speaking, many aspects aspect of college life have gotten more difficult to navigate and the student is often the last to know of policy changes and revised deadlines. As universities cut costs, those tasked with assisting students become over-burdened and frustrated. Add all of this to the ever increasing real cost of a degree, and it is no wonder that many find it tough to reach the finish line.
6
It's not so much that it's hard to figure out how to graduate, but that it's incredibly easy to make a mistake. And then sometimes the rules change with unintended consequences.
I was almost derailed in college by 3 decisions, a mistake and a rule change.
Decision 1) In high school, I quit taking math after my 2nd year. This caused me to do poorly on the college math placement test and added 4 math classes (and 4 quarters) to my graduation plan.
Decision 2) I spent my 1st quarter in a certificate program that did not count at all towards the degree program I switched to in my 2nd quarter.
My goal was to transfer to a university with junior standing. This required that I get a direct-transfer degree and that I complete all the prerequisites for the 300-level university classes while at the community college. But (Mistake) I was a little late in learning that the university I chose didn't have a direct-transfer agreement for the type of degree I was working towards. So (Decision 3) I added 3 classes to my plan in order to earn both degrees.
Rule Change: I had two quarters left (5 classes, with 3 in progress) when the state legislature passed a rule that would financially penalize community college students that exceeded a number of credits. I was going to exceed the limit, and still have two classes left. Fortunately, I managed to use the new rule to justify a couple waivers involving those last two classes and graduated before the new rule took affect.
2
In the past, college students came from a narrow cohort of middle class and above. Now we are admitting many first generation college students and those from the lower classes whose families and schools have not prepared them... at all.
1
Only about 15% of American young people have the necessary IQ of at least 115 they need to understand the difficult and abstract concepts they will face in college. To say it is the fault of the schools is just plain false. It's the students. Admitting students to college who score low on the SAT or ACT is just wrong, not just for the student but for the schools as well. No one benefits. The student ends up feeling like a failure even though he could be successful if care was taken to access his abilities and adults told him the truth and not fill her head with foolish claptrap about how she would make it "if she only wanted it bad enough." I want to be an astrophysicist but that will never happen, not because of the local college but because I am not smart enough and will never be smart enough no matter "how bad I want it."
1
Missing data: What was the graduation rate historically? Second, other data shows that three things are at play, inadequate preparation in high school (the percentage of students needing remedial courses), admission standards in public colleges and universities have changed, and the number of older students enrolled. It starts with k-12 failing to prepare students for college and there is no accountability.
1
It's interesting that many of the comments miss the importance of the major methodological approach of this study: the comparison of graduation rates of similar institutions that focuses on their expected graduation rate and their actual graduation rate. To be sure, the analysis could go further by considering issues of grade inflation at comparable institutions and a deeper analysis of funding by states and how funds are allocated. Also, one can raise more philosophical questions about whether graduation rates are true indicators of what students learn or whether, indeed, a college education is value. Within the parameters this study sets out, however, it is very well done and highly information. We need more journalism like this. Kudos.
"This pattern may step in part from factors..that our analysis didn't take into control." Disaggregating the data about the students specifically is more telling than just looking at percent of drop outs. Here are some factors that I don't see in this study: high school performance, working or nonworking students (how many hours did those drop out students work off and on campus?), married, kids or no kids, financial support from parents, diagnosed learning disabilities, transportation (car or no car?). These factors are important. If a student can afford to live on campus and living on campus increases success, then factors other than this are also important. I taught high school students whom I saw going to college before they were ready. They were accepted into two year programs and still dropped out because they had to work to earn money so they had a car for transportation. The lack of public transportation also should factor in to success or not. Simply getting to college classes can be a struggle. Studies like these where school programs are seen as the main factor are misleading. Students may not care about some themed week of activities if they have to get to a job, take care of kids, take a bus, or whatever daily challenges they fact just to get to school.
1
It is all relative. A certain amount of students will drop out for valid reasons. I was one of them, did about three yrs. and realized I had enough, got a good job and retired well.
However either extreme is no good. If you have open admissions like they did in 1970 and let everybody in, you will get 70% drop out rates.
If you make colleges super expensive or super hard like they do today you will have near perfect graduation rates but very few total numbers of college graduates and hurt many people who want to go to college.
1
Although there is a note at the end that "explains" how the expected graduation rate was addressed, it fails to explain it in a meaningful way. How was the rate determined? What do you expect from a college? Did you take an average of all students you looked at, divided up into some sort of demographic categories, and come up with expectations for them, then compare that to each college's graduation rate? This seems to underplay the role of the college admissions office: to find a diverse and interesting student body composed of students most likely to stay and graduate. The efforts of Laverne and Houston to do just that is admirable.
We don't have a crisis of no certificates or sheepskins; we have a crisis of student debt in the presence of no certificates or sheepskins.
We could lesson this crisis by adopting a public policy which aligns students' academic competency with the academic standards of the schools at which they intend to matriculate. To that end four year schools should not be permitted to approve loans to freshman who do not have SAT/ACT scores of 1200/24 or scores above the school's 50th percentile whichever are lower. Some flexibility for special cases of a limited number might be the province of admissions committees.
Those not meeting the standard should understand that community colleges are available to bring their academic qualifications up to the level required to succeed at the university level.
1
The Polytechnic Institute of New York, now part of NYU, offered free tutoring and encouraged all students to sign up early in the semester, regardless of need. Upperclassmen served as tutors, providing the college with an outlet for work-study funds and academically relevant employment for student tutors. Regular weekly meetings with a tutor helped keep students on track, and helped prevent students from falling too far behind to catch up in difficult fast-paced STEM classes. Other colleges should emulate this program.
1
I would expect the expected graduation rate of a college to be a range, where the range is proportional to the number of students in the denominator at that college. I'd like to see this data presented using an Analysis of Means (for rates or proportions as appropriate) or a funnel plot (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15568194). In addition, unless there is a compelling reason to hide your data and analysis, you need to provide at least your data set, but preferably a computable document, such as a Jupyter notebook or R Markdown containing the data and all of the steps to reproducing your graphs and conclusions.
2
Some kids don’t have the preparation in high school to perform well in college. Some kids don’t have the resources to pay for college. Some kids do not have the motivation to go to college. Some kids are simply not smart enough to do well in college.
That is why we have community colleges: to allow kids easy, inexpensive and less stressful access to the college experience. While there is some stigma attached to attending community colleges, transferring from them to four-year colleges is relatively easy for those who work hard and get good grades. Kids who can’t make the grade in community colleges should consider trade schools, apprenticeship, the armed services, and other non-college options.
There are lots of levels of schooling and training beyond high school; and not everyone is suited or ready for the four-year college experience.
Why do we insist on forcing square pegs into round holes?
4
Although it is true that colleges could do a lot better in retaining students, it is also true that many of them are just extending what should have been learned in high school (and was at one time). Not everyone wants a college education except as a certificate to get ahead; that isn't right and isn't the real purpose of higher education.
From my own past experience, I found that my high school did not prepare me for college, and worse yet, my college did not prepare me for graduate school. And that was over 60 years ago. Good grief, we haven't progressed since then.
32
I am of your generation and graduated from an Ivy. If we had advisors or support staff who took a personal interest in our progress, I never met or heard of one. It was sink or swim. Profs saw us in class and rarely if ever elsewhere. Starting with Freshman year those who could not keep up just disappeared. Mostly they disappeared into the armed services, that being a time of the draft. Leaving school meant losing that deferment -- and with a war in progress.
We took this as the normal state of things and expected nothing more from our profs than to teach their courses, while making a name for themselves by publishing academic papers, etc.
3
I was a high-achieving high school student with great (near-perfect) test scores and National Merit Scholar, who went on to a tough program at a high-ranking state school. Like you, I was totally unprepared. I had never been shown how to study or learn something on my own.
Professors, TAs, "advisors" had no interest in helping. There were no resources. No one to guide me to a program that was a good fit for my skills. No recognition of the anxiety and depression all this caused me - mental health was still a fairly taboo topic. Somehow, I managed to keep my head above water, and get a degree in five years.
I later went on to work at that same university for many years. In the time since I graduated and since I left the University three years ago, programs and systems for all of those things have been instituted across the university. They really focus on making sure the students learn how to learn, how to make good decisions, get assistance with life issues other than homework.
Some would say it's coddling, but we have to remember, these are 18-19-20-year-old-kids. They haven't learned these skills yet, and for most of us, they don't just suddenly appear on our 18th birthdays. Schools that have added these types of programs/services for students seem to be the ones doing the best.
5
Some kids don’t have the preparation in high school to perform well in college. Some kids don’t have the resources to pay for college. Some kids do not have the motivation to go to college. Some kids are simply not smart enough to do well in college.
That is why we have community colleges: to allow kids easy, inexpensive and less stressful access to the college experience. While there is some stigma attached to attending community colleges, transferring from them to four-year colleges is relatively easy for those who work hard and get good grades. Kids who can’t make the grade in community colleges should (need to) consider trade schools, apprenticeship, the armed services, and other non-college options.
There are lots of levels of schooling and training beyond high school; and not everyone is suited or ready for the four-year college experience. Why do we insist on forcing square pegs into round holes?
1
This is an interesting and useful article, but (as with any such endeavor) it's important to be aware of its limitations. It is also important to think about additional considerations or variables that may influence the results, even within the terms of the study. For instance, schools with lower graduation rates are, in general, affected by being located in states with overall weaker public education systems. Schools that enroll high numbers on first-generation college students generally have to work harder at facilitating basic acclimation and study skills. And even these considerations are not necessarily clear: A university in a state with weak generally public education may have high numbers of comparatively well-prepared foreign students, for example.
1
This is not a crisis, this is normal. I started college in 1968 at a state institution. During Welcome Week the College President talked to us. He told us to look at the person to the right of us and to the left of us. He then told us that one one of the three would graduate.
5
This is an amazingly superficial analysis. The assumption is that schools with higher graduation rates are doing something better. But it’s easy to graduate everyone (barring financial issues) — don’t fail any students. Colleges with financial problems have more motivation to do this, and now the NYT is declaring them to be doing a better job educating students.
16
I've always thought it was a bit backward to send kids straight from high school to college. Nothing encourages someone to figure out what they want to do quite like doing something they don't want to do. A few years of work after high school would give students valuable life experience that would make them more cherish and focus on their college careers.
25
I have long advocated for two years of national service before going on to college. Extra benefits for those who choose the military. Allows for folks to grow up, get remedial help, do something good for their communities and have peoples of all backrounds come together.
2
That'd be great if you could tell them the money will be there to go to school full time when they've "worked a few years". Most of the students I know already try to work full time at demeaning dead end jobs and go to school full time, still taking out loans.
3
Most excellent idea. Lock-step h.s. to college is quite often dumb for 18 yr olds. Their real education begins when they graduate college...A job, a real job, gives independence and forces young people to make their own decisions, make mistakes early, recover, and become honest, self supporting citizens.
1
Perhaps the "top-performing" colleges simply let the students pass their classes regardless of whether they can read and write well, or do the work, whereas the "struggling" schools actually hold them to standards. Has this been taken into account in the methodology of this study?
30
Ifyou we look at the reasons for dropping out, my belief ( my opinion) is that root causes will be far beyond not making a grade.
1
Has this been taken into account ? Likely not
In my experience, the more badly a school needs increased enrollment , the higher the graduation rate
2
I know one of the lowest schools here has great faculty, but is completely demoralized by some kind of fight being conducted at the state level over IU vs. Purdue control. ICHE, state legislators, Daniels and McRobbie should be ashamed.
1
I totally agree that the graduation drop out problem is as important as the cost of college and student loan debt. The U.S. Department of Education should bar any public or private college or trade school from student loan/Pell grants if at least 50% of their students fail to graduate. Then gradually raise the ratio to 75%.
Attending college and not getting a degree does virtually nothing to increase earnings but does saddle the student with debt which often cannot be repaid. This is a racket perpetrated on students and financed by the federal government.
College should not accept students who cannot pass the courses; perhaps community colleges can offer remedial courses to improve student readiness for true college level courses.
1
Much like possessing the cognitive ability to fill out a FAFSA or write an entrance essay without assistance; perhaps college completion is merely another one of society’s ad hoc tests for just showing up with a modicum of ambition, willingness to work, and intelligence.
My counsel to undergrads is to own what is rightfully yours. Your choices, your consequences when you attend college.
1
I graduated from Indiana University, one of your "under performing" state universities, 48 years ago. Then, it was a matter of pride that almost 1/2 of the students were told to leave or chose on their own to leave for academic reasons by the end of their second year. Every citizen of the state who had graduated with a C average from an Indiana high school was guaranteed admission to the system. Non-credit classes were available to help students who were struggling with math, writing or the reading load they encountered. But in general, the faculty would not lower their standards (although some professors, facing the appalling choice of being the reason a young man they knew was sent to Vietnam instead of someone else were said to give few failing grades.) This was possible and acceptable in a state university because state taxes kept tuition low and opportunities existed for people who didn't like academics to succeed and live middle-class lifestyles. Businesses still offered meaningful career paths and industries sponsored apprenticeships that offered a living wage and after completion, entry to highly paid, skilled trades work. New technology has changed much about the economy, but Germany still has apprentice systems in their industries. A crucial difference is Germany, unlike the US, did not allow the siren song of the Chicago School of Economics to dictate national policy. We have traded the greatest public university system in history for lower taxes on the wealthy.
4
Where can we find the details? Is a paper to be published? For example, I want to know how you took variables like income, gender, race, and test scores and turned them into an expected graduation rate. Is there a standard multivariate model for that? Is it trustworthy?
1
With due respect to a worthy effort that I'm truly glad to see, this appears to be an exercise that comes down to identifying what schools are succeeding/failing based entirely on how well they stack up to your model. That means you must have a great deal of confidence in the model to have faith in what the results are telling you about the schools. Taking a look at the map of the US, there's an eye-popping spatial trend: all the "worse than expected" schools are in one area - interior, largely rural areas. It's easy to throw stones at something you don't understand, and I'd hate to be that person - but I really suspect the model isn't capturing something important if you have such a pronounced spatial pattern there. When "flyover country"looks bad based on the model, how often do people check the model assumptions?
4
After I left the Navy I took advantage of the GI bill and went to college. During the "admitted students day" an adviser would sit with you and help you with your first semester schedule. I was told I should only take 9 or 12 units. I had to argue with the person who was supposed to be helping me to take 15 units (the amount every student should be taking to graduate in 4 years)
There were all kinds of excuses for why I shouldn't take 15 units. First it was that by taking fewer units I would be able to join clubs/ groups and see what interests me. Eventually I was told I haven't been to school in a while (I was 25 when I started at this school) and I would need to adjust since school isn't like the military (not even sure what that means).
I'm back in school again, this time for my MBA. The cheating epidemic will likely do more damage than anything else. As collaboration features continue to be added to Microsoft Office Suite and Google Office Suite it makes cheating easier than ever. Most students in my experience don't care about actually learning the content, they just want the piece of paper so they can get a higher salary.
3
While many of the 2020 candidates speak of free tuition and/or student loan forgiveness, for the most part they've been silent on this issue. I hope high school college counselors incorporate this in their guidance.
Too many young people are going to college that are either not motivated or not intelligent enough to succeed. The pharmacy college that I graduated from 50 years ago purposely tried to weed out the unqualified in their freshman year. Of course, in those days students were not coddled and pampered as they are today.
3
This analysis just isn't thorough enough. While it's helpful to hear about these student-centered initiatives, many schools have similar programs, and in many cases this is merely lip service. Many schools, public and private, are now mostly tuition driven, which means they cannot afford any attrition. Some states now tie funding to graduation rates (Louisiana for example), but without adequate staffing, educator training, good policies, and enforcement of those policies, all this does is put pressure on college teaching to become a popularity contest and for faculty to go easy on grades. When you watch your colleagues give students Bs and Cs or passing grades to students who (nice as they are as human beings) cannot write a correct sentence, or give A's for semesters on end for thesis hours when the student has not been making progress, it is clear that the system is not working as it should. In academia battles are fought at the micro level of internal policies naked to the average eye, such as over degree plans, course rotations, committee assignments, and the like. It's a hugely complex system and very hard to audit or understand from the outside. Without a clear mandate from the top administrators, middle managers are just not going to risk a head-roll. And top administrators are busy pleasing football fans and local business leaders who don't understand education.
1
My husband and I were both near the top of our high school classes. He attended an expensive, private college. I went to a less expensive, public college. There were many differences, but a critical one was workload. At my husband’s private college, a class that met for a 50-minute hour 3 days a week was worth 4 credit hours, and a full-time student took 16 hours, or 4 classes. At my public school, the same 3-day-a-week class was worth 3 hours’ credit, and a full-time student took 15 hours, or five classes: i.e., my full-time load was 25% heavier than his. Add to private colleges’ leg up students with higher test scores (i.e., smarter students), more affluent students (don’t need to work part-time while working 25% harder), younger students (less likely to be caring for children, keeping house, or have other family obligations) and it’s easy to see why the deck is stacked against public college students. But perhaps most difficult is a learned academic culture: parents who read to them, parents who helped with homework and in developing good study habits and academic goals from a young age, and the difficulty becomes much more. That’s why I’m firmly convinced that the best way to improve college success is to improve academic success through quality early-education programs: universal preschool. If we start with students who are socialized for learning, the remaining 16 years of education will be that much easier, even if they have to work harder for them.
2
Compared with 60 years ago, many more children are graduating high school and so many more are going on to college. Are they all on a par with those who went to college in the past?
I remember being told on my first day in college orientation to look to my left and right: "One of you will not be here next year," we were told. It seems that the percentage of dropouts has not changed even as more and more children with dubious high school grades go on to higher education.
Perhaps the current problem is not too many dropouts but too many admissions.
1
You state that this analysis shows that it is the school and not its students who are either doing well or doing poorly with respect to graduation. I suspect it is both and perhaps the state's educational system leading into college. This analysis suffers from its broad strokes; there is no assessment of student potential leading into their college career, no assessment as to how they did in the schools, nor if the individual schools varied in their standards of grading and other assessments. Not everyone should go to college except in a society that offers little choice but to join the military and be maimed for their country, if not demanding their ultimate sacrifice.
1
In my own completely unscientific observations based on my own kids' experience and that of their friends, in my upper-middle demographic, boys are dropping out more frequently than girls. In fact it's alarming. The boys seem to be adrift while the girls are focused, hard-working, far more mature and utterly driven. In conversations with other parents I've learned that they're seeing it too. Boys in that demographic - white, upper middle - are the most unsympathetic group in America right now, despite all the signs of distress - drop our rates, suicide, depression, drug abuse. Either it's nothing or it's something, but if it's the latter and we're ignoring it, there will be a cost.
2
It’s a way to weed out those that don’t belong. The “troubled” schools appear to be mostly state schools. Easy to get into to and easy to drop out. These type schools offer great educations but the student needs to take advantage of what’s offered. Private schools are more expensive and tend to hold the students hand to help them stay in. Something like 80% of Ivy League students are on the Deans list. Smaller class sizes allow closer consideration of students that are struggling. Both type schools are great.
I thrived at a large State school. My brother flunked out. He later graduated from a small private school where they cared if a student didn’t show up. My school was very hard. I once relieved a 42% grade on a physics test. It was the second highest grade in the class of 120 students. It was curved to an A-. Bell curve was used in all math and science classes. Tough.
I had a friend who transferred from Notre Dame to my state school. He said it was harder getting out of Notre Dame than getting in. They wouldn’t let him leave because it made them look bad. They didn’t care about him. He thrived at my school and is one of the smartest people I’ve met.
2
Correlation is not causation. "Educated people are healthier", for example. It's not very plausible that a college degree imparts health-enhancement powers, much more likely that inability to complete a degree is a side effect of I'll health.
1
In my experience there were three key elements to success in college:
1. Connection
2. Passion
3. Financial aid
I put myself through college, and started off at one Ivy League school that seemed to consist entirely of graduates from Exeter and Andover and Choate. I felt so socially isolated that I dropped out after my freshman year. Fortunately I transferred to another Ivy that was located in a community I'd been living in, so I had a great group of friends and support.
Once in the right environment, I attacked my studies with passion. I was a math and physics major and was absolutely in love with the subjects. I felt like a kid in a candy store at the beginning of each semester as I considered all of the course offerings: I had a hard time saying no, and each semester was filled to the brim with great courses. My biggest failing in college was taking too many courses.
Lastly, I had a free ride courtesy of wealthy alums and a large endowment. I graduated with ~$8,000 in low-interest student loans, in which the interest was deferred until the repayment started. And repayment did not start until I finished all of my formal education (which included graduate school and medical school).
1
"Affordability is “probably the biggest factor” prompting dropouts, he said.
I am sure that is true. However, doing college work is very difficult for these kids. They are unprepared.
There is a nonpecuniary element to all this: inferior high schools which produce graduates not ready for college. Nowadays high school has to compete with mobile devices and social media. Hence, not much real work gets done.
They don't call it the College of Arts & Sciences for nothing. And the College of Engineering is less of a cakewalk.
Today's students have inferior reading comprehension and scant ability for quantitative analysis. And they are distracted too often to assimilate abstruse topics
After attending a top high school, my three brothers and I went to a solid State school which was not Ivy, Virginia or Cal, but still a State school in the American Association of Universities. Let me tell you something, we could not believe how rigorous the classes and how tough the academic competition was. And all four of us went on to doctorate level professional careers.
My advice to administrators and legislators: make tuition affordable and give the students a fighting chance to make it.
My advice to students: put the iPhone down, listen to your teachers, read difficult things, and make a habit of study!!!!
5
Therapy or boot camp?
Therapy is expensive, and products are iffy (some are rendered dependent and weak). Most problems at colleges are solved by hiring low cost, low talent administrators, who are then called to dispense therapy, feel good programs that students find tedious and do not attend. Costs escalate.
1
Why did you expect those red state "struggling" schools to perform better than they did? Just looked at the graphics so I might have missed it.
La Verne’s president, Devorah Lieberman, said, “The bottom line is connection — feeling like somebody cares.”
For a school with a total cost of living of $61k/year according to its website despite little to no national profile, I sure hope they care!
2
Maybe we should stop pushing everyone to go to college, which is what they do in Europe.
1
I would like to see some examples of how commuter campuses do a better job. Not everyone can live in a dormitory.
1
The US spends a tremendous amount of money on higher education. Wouldn't it be better if the US spent more money on K-12 and made sure kids had good habits before they got to college?
4
There are two general approaches: 1. If you are good enough to be accepted then you are good enough to get through and graduate. An acceptance is an investment in human capital and dropout is a failure in that investment. Provide conditions that allow a student to study and learn. That might include a feasible work program 2. Congratulations, you were accepted. Now prove that you are worthy. Good luck.
#1 is very popular where funding is connected to graduation rates. #2 reflects the ethos of sink or swim that is often necessary to survive in life. Survival of the fittest. Acceptance is a gamble and not an investment.
What is usually needed is some type of combination between #1 and #2. That is a matter of luck.
2
At the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where I used to teach, there is a wonderful summer program called the Rural Alaska Honors Institute, in which students from rural Alaskan villages spend six weeks on the UAF campus, taking college-prep classes and learning to navigate the campus and the city. It's a way not only to teach college skills, but also to ease the culture shock of going from a small Alaska Native village to the big city. When the same students show up to campus as freshman, they're coming to a place where they already know the ropes and know who to go to for support, and it makes a huge difference to their graduation rates.
2
"One in three students who enroll in college never earn a degree."
The level of outstanding student debt is $1.3 trillion. How much of this debt is owed by students who will never earn a degree? What is the probability that those students without degrees will default on their loans?
5
Please, for the love of god, do not get an education degree
7
Maybe the college with the most drop outs are not cheating and have less Asian students who pay for their tuition as a way to find a husband and a pathway to citizenship.
In NZ lots of Asian students pay ghost writers to write their papers and the studetns can hardly understand English let along write it.. Apparently a Degree from a Western world nation has more prestige back in their own nations.
Apart from foreign fee paying students I'd say that lots of the drop outs probably haven't been prepared at school for how universities like their essays set out etc. You get marks for presentation and correct margin layout when typing up your paper.
The system is foreign to the school education system and a culture shock for some students and they need liaison officers for people from families whose members have never been to varsity before.
As an adult student I was struggling with law 101 so I hired a senior student to detangle what the lecturer was saying. All my work was mine but I was probably a 'special needs' university student. I also paid someone to type up my essays for me as that takes the stress out of university. The work I'd written was mine. People advertise on the library notice boards and senior students put handwritten notices on that particular courses notice board offering tuition help for money.
I passed all my courses with B and C grades. (I left school at 15yrs and went out to work full time and wasn't there for a job)
2
While it is worth while to see that every student gets properly educated, graduation rates are a stupid metric. If you want to game the system, require all faculty to give A's.
Also, back 50 years ago, it was assumed that some college education was better than no college education. A student doesn't have an "educated" button that gets pushed only when handed a diploma.
7
My Ph.D. thesis involves use of some "Proprietary Data" which you would not get readily in public literature. The use of that data itself is part of "Indian Jugaad" in getting a Simple, Practical and yet relevant algorithm. And I got that data from a Book thrown into Garbage by a Professor [He had kept all his books outside his room for people to take]. So part of my thesis is based on useful Garbage.
2
At our top tier school’s Freshman Camp circa 1970, we were told: “Look to the left. Look to the right. One of you will not graduate.” Of course, being top tier, the losers went to lesser schools to get their degree. Oddly, I transferred in from a lesser school as a sophomore, so I never got the lecture, I only heard about it.
3
Articles like this make me cringe. Graduation rates are a bogus and counter-productive obsession.
There is no magic conferral of knowledge or competence that happens when a diploma is handed over. We are doing our citizenry a tremendous disservice by pretending otherwise, by feeding the diploma fetish rather than breaking the spell and emphasizing actual, demonstrable knowledge or training. The student debt crisis is spiraling ever further out of control, and millions of people are wasting years of their lives chasing paper when they'd be better served getting a job or doing vocational training.
This obsession with "college completion" is only going to make schools water down their curricula even further, making the student experience even less worthwhile than it is now, and allowing ever lazier and more ignorant students to "complete college," just so their institution can rank higher in wrong-headed gotcha pieces like this NYT article.
12
What is not mentioned here about college is that quite often the professors are not qualified teachers. This too can have significant effects on students learning. A professor who does not take the time to understand how a student who comes to him/her for help learns or is failing to learn, fails the student. Impersonal classes or classes that are too large can hurt students. I know. I went to SUNY Oneonta and the size of the classes was very discouraging as were the attitudes of most of the professors. One professor had office hours early in the morning twice a week. And by early I don't mean 9:00am. I mean 6:00am. Another professor was always hung over during class. Still another asked us to do projects that required materials which were not in the library.
I graduated from college hating education. Prior to that I'd loved learning in all its forms. College was nothing more than a glorified version of high school. I was insulted at having to pay for classes that were taught by professors who weren't competent teachers. I was not encouraged by any of my professors. None of them reached out to any but the top students. The rest of us were ignored or shunned. I never went back for a graduate degree and my undergraduate experience is one of the bigger reasons why. The other reason is that college credits on a graduate level were so expensive that I couldn't afford to pay. College is not always best for students.
5
Good article and some interesting analysis. However, the single biggest problem with low graduation rates is that too many students are admitted to college that should not be there. It would be more cost effective, for both students and tax payers to not let them in, or if necessary, to flunk them out early and get on with things. Students that take six years, get special treatment and hand-holding, and run up 6 years worth of borrowed money are not getting ahead.
9
@Nate, I understand what you're saying about students taking 6 years to graduate, but some of those students are taking 6 years because they WILL graduate debt-free by doing so. My son will be one of those students. For the record, his advisor says something about him not taking a full load each semester (no special treatment or hand-holding), but he doesn't take a full load because he's working full-time to put himself through. His advisor knows this, but has to say something because the university makes them. Can't be prouder of this kid, and those extra two years it's taking him will be totally worth it when he isn't drowning in debt like so many others. And he won't have to worry about finding a job when he graduates either; the company he works for has promoted him twice in the past three years, and they're getting ready to promote him again. His income will almost double: to $30k/year. Not too shabby for a kid who's on the 6-year plan. The point here is that he has a plan and he's executing it. I'm concerned about the ones who take on a boat load of debt, drop out because of finances, and are working low paid jobs because they don't have a degree. That must be miserable.
1
Great article, and I loved how that chart was laid out to change as I read it. Way to take it to the next level NYT!
1
The authors seem to have compared institutions which have similar student demographics but do not seem to have considered and compared the rigor of the coursework across institutions. That, admittedly, is not an easy thing to do but colleges and universities, even amongst institutions with comparably able students, vary dramatically in the substance of instruction in courses which are nominally the same and that can have asignificant impact on retention and graduation rates.
Beyond that, though, this represents the ongoing fetishizing of a bachelor's degree as the unqualified 'must have' for people entering adulthood. We need to look to ther models which better serve the goals of students and the needs of the labor market. In particular, corporations need to take a more active role in paying for and directing the education of students by offering cooperative apprencticeships and internships for secondary school, community college and, yes, bachelor's degree students. It's increasingly clear that any nth bachelor's degree is not necessarily a desirable credential for either the economic or cultural/intellectual benefits it confers.
3
I think the problem has as much to do with our education system through High School as it does with Universities. Simply put, too many ill-prepared students, and too many mediocre Universities which simply want to fill seats. I admit that my undergraduate days are about 50 years ago, but I would like to think that the basics of education at both HS and college levels haven’t changed that much. I was middle class, as were most of my friends, and I went to college on an academic scholarship. Absent the scholarship I would have attended the low-cost CCNY. But I know only one person who didn’t graduate in 4 years; anything longer would have been too expensive. I’m sure some flunked out, but I don’t think I knew any, and while I had low grades in some courses which I simply couldn’t master, my overall was enough for graduate school. But “streaming” in HS wasn’t a non-PC concept, colleges were selective, and not everyone went to University. That part of the equation has definitely changed.
8
One of the reasons students don't complete their degrees is that post-secondary institutions offer certificates of completion in diplomas or degrees, which may or may not prove competence of skills required to achieved that certification. As one who works in post-secondary education, I can attest that many students (and faculty) find ways to "pass" students who haven't achieved at least 50% of the knowledge -- a passing grade does not assure 50% of knowledge, especially when much of the marks are homework assignments such as papers, online quizzes, reflections, etc. These assessments are easily copied or purchased making sure the student gets a passing grade but doesn't know the material. As a result, a number of students start to feel the pressure on not advancing.
Another issue we see is that students are finding that they can get the skills online, and be assessed online at a much lower cost than a university or college certificate. The market hires on demonstrated skills, not as much anymore on the diploma or degree. Students are realizing that the cost of acquiring these skills are significantly less than attending college, hence they make the choice not to continue.
Just because they are not completing their "education" at a college and appear to drop out, doesn't mean they are not acquiring marketable skills. The sooner these institutions realize this, the sooner they will start to offer marketable skills, not just "degrees".
2
First, I really appreciate seeing this type of analysis in a newspaper where it's more widely available. Appreciate everyone who was involved in this article!
Secondly, as a 2-year college professor, I can tell you that connections DO matter. These connections need to be nurtured both officially and unofficially, through those organic experiences that link people in the same/similar stage of life.
2-year students are usually working at least part-time, they are commuting and many are parents. There are so many factors pulling them away from their education that those who make it through are truly on a hero's journey. Many workplaces are not supportive of student workers, child care facilities close by 6pm and, in my community, the local bus service doesn't run regularly enough to help those that don't have a car. Schools can do better, but so can our communities. They tell us they want an educated workforce, so help us out!
5
A college degree often is mistaken as the key to a successful life. However, not everyone is intellectually or emotionally prepared for the work needed to succeed, not to mention the sacrifice of time and money involved. Many students, unfortunately, even if they graduate after an excessive number of years marked by many hours of diverting, stressful work needed to pay fees and living expenses, and then saddled with high debt burdens, wind up in jobs that pay little and don't require use of the skills they have alleged attained. In this case the choice of major, which might be fun while in school, often is not a door opener for remunerative employment.
Politicians who promote four-year degrees as a bromide, are in the forefront of the problem. While many trades are starved for skilled workers, potential students, lured by the snob appeal of a four-year college degree, have been led down the wrong path. Internship programs that lead to certification, together with a two- or three-year community college degree, usually lead to better outcomes. Most of these programs also are geared to local employment conditions and offer students opportunities for related paid employment while pursuing formal studies. No solutions are perfect.
2
This kind of data should be shared with counselors, parents, and students BEFORE they choose a school.
Most kids pick a school with very little hard data to go on regarding how the school they choose impacts student debt, placement in graduate and professional programs, placement in companies in the area of study, graduation rates and other very important things. I remember seeing an article showing that many students can actually go to more expensive private schools and leave with less debt than supposedly cheaper public schools due to the various programs and student aid available.
These days a quality education is not just important to get ahead- it is important just to get into the game. At the prices being charged and the amount of debt being accumulated, students cannot afford to make a mistake and not choose the school and situation right for them.
2
$$ Matters. My son transferred to my university (where I am a full professor) last fall. He receives a scholarship for which he was told he must maintain eligibility according to the university's financial aid guidelines. We carefully read the university's 2-page document outlining their eligibility standards. Unfortunately, we misunderstood a critical detail in the document (that involves % of attempted credits that are completed). As a result, he made enrollment choices that resulted in him just being declared ineligible for aid. We are told that he was informed via single email in December that he was on Warning status and in early May that he was on Probation status. We can't locate either email. No mention of this potentially college career-ending status appears on his online portal. Surely such a serious message could be conveyed more effectively! He only learned of this last week when he got a 2nd bill for the summer session for the amount of the scholarship. This bill came too late to modify summer registration-now we owe $2,000+ (yes we are appealing). For many families, this would be the end of college. After getting the unexpected bill, it took 2 days to figure out why because none of the persons at the university whose job it is to answer these questions were able to figure it out.
In my view, this university is not just failing its students, it may be out of compliance with federal financial aid guidelines. And sadly, I doubt this is unusual.
2
If some students don't have the necessary academic skills to complete college then it's because they aren't acquiring them in our public schools. My best friend teaches at an urban high school. The things that go on there are scandalous. Students are given multiple opportunities to retake the tests. The bad scores are thrown out. If this doesn't work they are given open book tests which some nevertheless fail. They are coddled more than a six-month-old baby. If nothing else works they are given a D-, passed to the next grade and become someone else's problem. F's are given as an absolute last resort. Why? Because it creates extra paperwork for the teachers, and accusations from administrators that the teacher is incompetent. American kids don't possess the communication & computational skills they need to succeed in college & the working world let alone life. That is a fact beyond debate and is an outrage. The DOE says a huge percentage of students graduating from high school can't read or write on a college level. It's no wonder they flounder when they get to a competitive environment. This is fraud. I would go even further and say it is Democratic fraud. They control the educational systems in most states. But school administrators have neither the guts or the will to address this problem head-on. There needs to be a complete investigation. This issue is much bigger than the college dropout crisis. They're interconnected & feed off each other.
11
I agree that K-12 education is a major problem, but I fail to see how it is solely a Democratic problem, especially given that the states that are the most underperforming (as per this article) are almost all conservative states, and likely with conservative school boards (for example, a recent Vanderbilt study showed that the majority of elected school board members are wealthy and Republican). I also do not think it is only a problem of the schools themselves - they can definitely do better, but they can't entirely make up for what the students are doing at home, or the values promoted by their peers, families, or in their community (is it cool or uncool to be smart?). I went to a state college in one of the underperforming states, and I have to say that the majority of my classmates were not what I would call curious about the world (or at least they didn't let on...), and they seemed to carry over from high school a kind of thought that participating in class discussion and actually caring about learning wasn't cool. It was like they were resistant to any appearance of learning. (Not everyone - there were also many engaged students, but we were the minority). I just accepted that as how things were until I went to graduate school at a prestigious school and saw the difference, among the undergraduates, not just in ability, but in engagement and embracing of learning.
5
College is not much different, and widespread fraud is occurring there as well. Pressure to graduate students coupled with declining state funds means more schools are tuition driven and desperate to fill seats. The lowest possible standards are horrifyingly common, even at the graduate level in some cases. Although administrators are to blame, there are also other factors--terrible policies or no policies, no enforcement from the top, fear of litigation at every turn leading to high levels of internal corruption, hostile political environment, poor pay, no post-tenure review... the list goes on and is more than one principal or dean can handle alone.
2
On one level isn't dropping (or, better yet, failing) out potentially a good thing? If you want a university degree to have value it has to be hard to get. Otherwise, what's the point?
17
In high school I was enrolled in special combined honors level history and english courses: The equivalent of college level courses. Same thing in the sciences, except they didn't plug in mathematics into chemistry (there was no lab). I got the "math" portion when I took chemistry in college.
90% of the college class of 1964 graduated in 4 years (September 1960 - June 1964). I only knew one person he took 6 years. He purposely took only 12 credits a semester to make sure he got an "A" in every course he took. He did, and had to choose between Harvard and Yale Law School. He wasn't a legacy student, and his parents couldn't afford to buy him a seat, so he had to do it on merit. O.K. I understand not everybody is me.
Six years to earn the equivalent of a high school diploma? America doesn't have a "dropout crisis," it has an "education crisis."
That's what happens when you turn higher education into a business, focus primarily on selling seats, and start conning people into believing they must have a college degree.
For what? To work in Walmart, Starbucks, drive for Uber, or work in an insurance call center?
Sorry this is not the same country I and millions like me, grew up in.
12
Well done, and well researched. But calling this a "crisis" is a little overblown, and feeds an anti-higher education political narrative that is very loud in some circles. In point of fact, college retention and graduation rates have been going up, not down, over the past decade. Institutions are paying much more attention to getting students to the finish line, and not just in enrolling them, and the strategies are paying off. There is a problem, and if United States universities don't do a better job of getting today's students to the finish line, we will see increasing economic inequality and with it less social mobility. First generation and low income students are now a majority of college students. We could solve the attrition problem overnight by turning those students away, and then we'd be back where we were thirty years ago. Let's not add higher education to the regressive funeral pyre of policy rollbacks we're seeing everywhere else in our society.
1
These institutions were built and paid for by our ancestors who left school at the age of 14 and 15 years old, and were built with the intention of their ancestors getting a better education than they did. Instead, of that happening the universities have been turned into a money making foreign student paying institution, for citizens who can't afford the big loans with the expectation you won't get a job at the end of it but are guaranteed a life time of debt.
Our ancestors would turn in their graves if they could see the profit making institutions that universities have evolved into.
Half of all university students in NZ are foreign fee paying students. It's cultural attitudes that have blocked locals from higher education and the subtle way some lecturers have, e.g. law degrees, of blocking out families whose families aren't in the legal fraternity and class system.
I paid a senior law student to get me through laws 101 and she was from a first time varsity family and used to score higher than lots of students from lawyer families and she was picked on and they'd say to her you won't get a good job because you're not from the right family or have lawyers in your family.
The guys didn't like her wanting to do commercial law and the push was for her to do Social services law for domestic disputes that paid less than lawyers who took up a position in commercial law firms. Hopefully she fought back and got a job in a Commercial law firm.
2
My daughter completed her first year at a competitive Public university and finished with a 3.0 GPA and is feeling like she failed and will not get into any program. I don't even know what to tell her.. Yes the world is competitive but to expect everyone to get 4.0 is harsh. You grow as you go and that is the advice I am giving her but right now I am scared about her future and getting her through School. This is a girl who scored a 33 on the ACT, is socially smart but who needed time to adjust to being away that first year of college. It is super discouraging to think this is who the university system is weeding out...
1
I've hired roughly 25-30 people over the course of my career; never once did I even think about their GPA. A solid degree from a decent school will help her get her foot in the door. Beyond that the ability to interview well is way more important than her grades.
8
It’s easy to raise graduation rates. Make courses undemanding, don’t count attendance, and give everyone high grades.
4
You're assuming that most people drop out because they can't hack the courses or don't show up to class. The reality is that an awful lot of people drop out over money, not academic challenges. They miss class because they don't have child care or their car broke down. They get poor grades because they work 50 hours a week, not because the course is too demanding. Rich kids aren't dropping out.
14
Indeed, there are hardship cases, but as a very long-term professor, I can tell you that many poorly performing students do not bother with reading assignments, do not study for elective courses, do not regularly attend class, and, if they have not dropped by end of term, inquire why their final grade was so low. These are polite, seemingly affluent students whose interests and motivations are not in the classroom but in other opportunities available at my very expensive university, which does score near the top on national rankings of “party schools.”
1
I teach at a state university (not on the list), and we too have had plenty of conversations about ways to improve retention and increase graduation rates. The administration always tells the faculty to make more of an effort to get to know students and spend more time doing advising, which is great in theory and does help when I can do it. However, I'm also asked to teach 4 classes per semesters, usually with about 180 students total in those classes, serve on pointless committees, and keep producing research. There just isn't the time or a workable teaching structure to allow for meaningful connections with the majority of students. I usually try to pick out maybe a half dozen students each semester who seem bright but aren't doing as well as they ought to be and then send them an email inviting them to discuss what's going on and how I can help. But I know there are more than that who could conceivably push through and graduate with that sort of help, and it's frustrating not to be able to do anything about it.
6
High school guidance counseling used to help students select post secondary schools and also choose potential majors. Not sure that most kids get adequate help with these decisions anymore.
2
In “Against School,” writer John Gatto made a case for schools’ purposes being to produce childishness and mindless consumption. He’s not wrong, and some of the hand-holding and “kitchen table” strategies in colleges and universities sort of prove his point. If students are not able to make a plan, meet academic requirements and responsibilities, keep track of their own progress, solve their issues with time management, writing competence, and reading comprehension, then what sort of graduates are we getting in the end? Clearly something needs to be done, but the successes of overly attentive and parental restructuring of higher ed, of sort of recreating the “family” students did not have while growing up, brings up profound questions about the purposes of higher ed and just who it is were graduating and putting in charge of the world.
6
Correlation is not causation.
The authors write, "The students who complete [college] typically go on to earn more and live healthier and happier lives." But we don't know that a college degree is the REASON for the health, wealth, and happiness.
Perhaps the students who are capable of completing college are also capable of earning more money and taking care of themselves physically and emotionally.
In my experience, those who enter college with intelligence, financial support, and emotional stability are most likely to succeed, regardless of what courses they take. Those who lack these resources will usually struggle, both in college and in life.
5
I think the big problem is STUDENT MOTIVATION.
Students spend so many years absorbing knowledge, without using it.
It is no wonder, that so many are dropping out of college.
Let me suggest that students be encouraged to help other students learn.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That way, they an apply what they are learning, while still in school.
You might call this, the "Golden Rule for Schools."
Learn, in order to teach and help other students.
Now, with the internet,
it becomes easy to share ideas with other students, all the time.
This is also a way for students to show that they care for other students.
Sharing helps students to learn more, with more motivation.
I say to students: LEARN in order to TEACH other students.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.SavingSchools.org
2
Why eliminate liberal arts schools from consideration? If they're doing notably better or worse than universities for similarly-situated students, wouldn't that be worth knowing?
1
Very important for anyone who wants to be a lawyer to study these topics. Not forgetting that the law making legislature are the foundations of democratic principles and nations.
1
Wow. What a wonderful and important article. Thank you for this excellent well thought out launch pad. This is exactly an example of a critical national topic that should transcend politics and bring us together to figure out performance improvements that really matter. So many great questions come out of this article. I read with detailed interest the experiences of Troy, University of Houston, and other specific examples.
Eventually, we can hopefully improve all baselines and allow students/parents better data to give a thought to best fit for each student based on who they are.
Excellent work here! Many thanks~!
1
We are sending kids to college who have no business being there and our K-12 system is dismal at best. So what did anyone expect?
3
Burn down all the on-line gaming servers and the male graduation rate (which lags the female) will improve. It's the most destructive force in college education, I would not be surprised if it outpaced alcohol.
22
Instead we are moving them into colleges, i.e. esports… might increase the numbers of men enrolling but then there's that pesky graduation rate... For the record I am 100% in agreement with you.
1
The real problem is having schools charge through the nose for garbage diplomas that will never result in you being able to repay the loan.
That is the problem.
Can you imagine kids on Gender Studies, or Liberal Arts, or MBA as Librarian or some such?
You get a super heavy loan to go to the Liberal Arts college that you choose because of some reason.
Then if you drop out, you’re stuck with the bill, and no career. If you graduate, you’re stuck with the even bigger bill, and no chance of ever using that phoney baloney certificate.
In either case, you’re stuck with a life long debt, and no tools to repay it.
Education of this type should come with a warning: ‘Danger – getting a degree on this will never repay the loan taken’, then kids can choose to study that once they have some means to live, not dream that this is the way to make a living.
But until these colleges get honest and straight, kids will continue falling for the trap, and getting stuck in the debt.
2
Colleges are not exactly advertising bachelor's degrees in the humanities as tickets to high-paying careers. Shockingly, some students (myself included) prefer to focus on gaining knowledge for its own sake. I agree that students should not take on excessive debt for ANY degree -- liberal arts or career-focused -- that is unlikely to lead to a job earning enough to pay down that debt. That's equally true for degrees in early childhood education, veterinary technology, and theology as for gender studies or art history. Doesn't mean preschool teachers, vet techs, and ministers are "garbage" and it doesn't mean gender scholars or art historians are garbage either.
I have a bachelor's in sociology and never had any trouble finding meaningful work even before I earned a master's in education. The fact that I never earned much money doesn't make it a "phoney baloney" degree.
5
A college degree by itself does not signify anything. Students can graduate having learned next to nothing. You should consider the possibility that colleges with higher graduation rates teach students less than colleges with lower graduation rates, ceteris paribus. In fact, we should stop measuring how good any school is by how many students it graduates. Instead, how about an exit exam--a real one that can't be gamed--that measures the actual extent of students' abilities?
8
Well, a 2008 study by the US Department of Education found that 5% of recent 'college graduates' are illiterate, and another 20% read at the 5th grade level.
Perhaps it's better not to know!
3
My brother once said paying for college is easy, but paying for living expenses is the hard part. I think he was probably right (but now it's a lot more expensive).
I think having the right guidance is critical in terms of what subjects to signup for and not just ambling from one course to another as in -- I enjoyed my six years at junior college!
For-profit colleges have a terrible drop out rate, and those poor folks are saddled with an astronomical debt with little to show for it.
A lot of people are not prepared to be successful in college -- as in can't write a coherent sentence. Remedial courses are needed which adds more time. Community colleges should be applauded -- cheaper, smaller class size, cheaper. Then transfer to a four year (state) college. The degree is what's critical imho more than the Ivy League moniker (although if you can get a scholarship or have wealthy parents go for it).
Lastly, I had an algebra teacher that said everyone has to work hard (there aren't many "super smart" students -- most are average) -- the A student's book is going to be dogeared and beaten up, and I think he was right.
2
How interesting that Boston University, a highly selective school, performs measurably worse than expected.
Is that because many of the students live off campus, which is unusual in Boston? Then again, Northeastern fares pretty well on this.
1
I would suggest adding a gender aspect to your analysis. The number of females enrolled in college is approaching 50% higher than the number of males. The ratio of females to males in colleges and universities ACROSS the country is approximately 60:40. The drop out percentage for males is also higher.
Data is available at NCES (National Center for Educational Statistics)
4
Drop-out factories are public policy. Our society *likes* having some colleges act as drop-out factories. Back in August 2010 the Washington Monthly named names when it published a report about the kind of college I adjuncted at for many years: not a diploma mill, but a drop-out factory. The Washington Monthly listed my employer in its top 50.
My CUNY college enrolled poor and underprepared students, worked very hard to bring them up to grade using mostly underpaid teachers, and watched the students melt away when their financial aid ran out. In a perverse way, the college was a dropout factory designed to sort and stigmatize the poor.
1
To me this shows the importance of only admitting students based on their actual ability to do the work, rather than on their athletic ability or "adversity" score.
19
"Many lower-income and middle-class students excel in high school only to falter in college."
You have some data on this? From what I have seen, many lower income and middle class students do terribly in high school but do gooders lobby for more and more money so they can go to colleges for which they are unprepared.
"Graduation" per se isn't much of a metric. Which institutions just sell the degree? What majors?
13
As a professor at one of the big state universities in the study, I am happy to find us on the good side of the line. I know we have worked specifically on our graduation rate for many years. This concern and effort, unfortunately, has been partially offset by the steadily decreasing abilities of our incoming freshmen. Something has been slowly turning our high-schoolers' brains to mush over the past 15 years, and I see no sign of the trend reversing. I sure do wish we could figure out what that problem is.
30
In the olden days, there were fewer college options. High schoolers heard a relentless chorus of "you better do well in High School or you'll never get into college". In the last decades, the focus has been on do overs: private sector colleges and places like the California Community Colleges that take any mirror fogger. High schoolers have gotten the message. High school doesn't matter. Blow it off and there is always some sort of college. Hence, you get heads full of mush.
3
Sandy Fulop,
You wrote, “Something has been slowly turning our high-schoolers' brains to mush over the past 15 years, and I see no sign of the trend reversing. I sure do wish we could figure out what that problem is.”
Electronics in its many distracting forms.
As a further note those electronics could be seen as part of the “Enlightenment Now” tsunami that is carrying us forward to much better things (thank you Steven Pinker).
1
Possible causes of MBS (mushy brain syndrome):
NCLB/CCSS standards-based, test and punish "reform"
Endless cyber-distractions/social media/screen time
Parental over-protection
Anti-intellectual culture
Sean
Your observations match those of thousands of educators around the country.
I teach middle school, the decline of student abilities is a product of student disinterest and nearly non-existent attention spans. If you think its bad now, you haven't seen anything yet.
Another strategy that would help. Admit students based upon criteria that predict graduation. At present, students try to collect clubs, volunteer experiences, etc. Do these factors have any predictive value for graduation?
1
The Obama Admin pushed college for everyone without thinking through what it really meant. College is not right for everyone - and pushing it, caused unintended consequences.
This study fails to provide any information on the quality of the education students are receiving at these schools. Have all GPAs gone up to encourage people to stay (are they pushing kids through the way many high schools do)?
8
Don't blame Obama for this. It is not his fault that a HS degree is pretty useless for getting ahead financially unless you want to work on an oil rig.
1
Could I ask you to forward this to every member of a state legislature responsible for funding a system of higher and further education? Some of the basic lessons here (that it costs money to serve students well, that financial support directly to students improved graduation rates) are utterly lost on many who control purse strings.
1
I am glad this issue is being looked at more closely. Far too many students accumulate huge amounts of debt and have no degree to show for it. As politicians add speaking points regarding college debt, the problem of non completers is rarely addressed. Instead of "free" college, I'd rather see us explore incentives like debt reduction or forgiveness based on completion AND some type of community service/underserved needs-type deal. In addition, we need to look at the level of state funding that has been stripped from public colleges (making tuition higher), and address interest rates.
12
Not surprisingly the states with the higher poverty rates tend to have a worse than expected graduation rate. But there seems to be no correlation between average and better than average graduation rates and less poverty or average amount of poverty. So my take is getting people out of poverty and improving graduation rates go hand in hand.
1
So, I go to the University of Nebraska at Omaha, one of the outliers in underperformance. I have a full ride as part of the Goodrich Scholarship program. The program, unlike the university, currently has a 100% freshman-to-sophomore retention rate of last year's cohort. It's highly unlikely for Goodrich students to drop out. Why? Because we have the best support system in the whole world. We have a special curriculum we can do while deciding majors. We have an advisor who doesn't just advise us academically, but also personally, whether about internships, food insecurity and more. We have a support specialist who does much of the same, but who has experience as an LMHP. Our professors know us by name and care deeply about helping us understand and love our studies. I tick all the struggling minority boxes as a queer, nonbinary low-income person of color who used to be homeless. But because I have financial, academic, and personal support, I consistently make the Dean's list, serve in student leadership and now work as a graphic designer. If you want to stop people from dropping out, treat them less like bodies in chairs, data points, or registration numbers and more like people. Advocate for better funding of public universities. Create or donate to scholarship funds. Insist on accessibility in policies. Vote for lawmakers who prioritize affordable and excellent education. Donate to college food pantries. Students are our future. Let's not let them down.
45
And don't discard us when we get more than 10 years experience in a field or we're close to retirement. I feel as if my college degree was a complete waste of time and money. I can't even find a minimum wage job and I'm too accustomed to solving problems to be ready to settle into a minimum wage job that doesn't require me to solve a logic puzzle so to speak.
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Take care, Maria. On the day that one graduates support specialists disappear. There will be no one who advises you on how to handle your money, how to handle your personal life, etc. You will have to handle all that on your own. Sink or swim. You can swim on your own, hopefully you will discover, after fearing once or twice that you are about to drown. Not nice perhaps, but a fact of life. Perhaps it is time to start saying thanks, but no thanks to all that nurturing and to begin charting your own path facing some sense of failure and then struggling back again to the surface through self determination. There is a such a thing as being killed with kindness.
Be careful with your statistics. College graduation rates, like high school graduation rates, are prone to easy and unscrupulous manipulation. For example, let's say that a large urban public school district has been touting its rapidly increasing graduation rate for ten years. If that school district has had flat or decreasing ACT scores during the same period, what has really been happening there?
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Community colleges do a good job of getting students to their next point of life, as do two-year technical schools. Part of the reason for this is that the concept of Retention is part of the accreditation process. Administrators at community colleges and some universities are paying attention to the research about the need to help first-generation students and minority students adjust to worlds that are far different than home.
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My school definitely checked many of these boxes. College orientation was one. They had a mandatory weekend of seminars and team building exercises a month or two before classes even started. You had to plan a course schedule and meet with an adviser. You were then strongly encouraged to enroll in a first-year seminar as well. This was basically a free credit for any full time student. Every seminar fulfilled some academic requirement anyway. You simply met for an extra hour each week for 1 extra credit. Those extra credits add up over time.
On-campus housing is strong point. The school guaranteed on-campus housing for every student and required underclass students to live on campus unless they sought an exemption. Like if you were living at home or had medical concerns for instance. Sometimes this got a little awkward. When too few upperclass students moved out or too many underclass students moved in, housing could get a little tight. Preference always goes to seniority. There were some years where they were literally stacking freshman in dorm room lounges.
On the whole though, the policy was a good one. Being on-campus, unpleasant though it may sometimes be, definitely improves graduation rates. Commuting to school is miserable. Don't do it if you can afford not to.
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It should be noted that accreditation and access to student loans is NOT dependent on college graduation or job placement for the non-profit sector - interestingly, many for profits have these requirements. The most sought after accreditation called Regional Accreditation as opposed to National accreditors and the type enjoyed by the Ivy's and traditional non profits are run by industry and faculty. Not surprisingly, they simply allow schools to accept non qualified students and on average, the US as a graduation rate of approximately 60% in 6 years for a four year degree. Community colleges are worse with as low as 15% graduation rates for 2 year degrees.
The solution is actually quite simple. The same rules or potentially enhanced rules already in place with for-profits should be universally applied reflecting a combination of repayment history and job success (Proxyies for completion) or enhanced with graduation requirements.
Students and their parents should opt for a community college then transfer to a four-year college.
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Here in Indy, some students try to take courses at the community college because they are thought to be easier than those same courses at the public four year. Then they are unprepared for courses that build on intro courses (say, calculus based physics for engineering) when their "college" classes at the community college are remedial, or taught by underpaid adjunct teachers who don't know intense subjects such as calculus. If you don't pay for quality teachers, you don't get quality teachers. By law, courses have to transfer, but GIGO still applies.
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Leonhardt and Chinoy emphasize the importance of extracurricular activities for undergraduate students. The ability for a student to progress within an extracurricular activity (musical, athletic, theatrical, political, or journalistic organization) depends on time within the organization. Two years (junior and senior year only for a community college transfer) is insufficient for a student to realize this progress.
There are a lot of good ideas as to how colleges can improve student success and graduation rates, but in order to take advantage of these - assuming colleges adopted them - students have to agree to attend. And this article doesn't address the single biggest obstacle to this: affordability.
And by that, I don't mean that students can get a student loan, because first of all, how's that workin'? When most college students are crushed by the predatory lending that has been allowed by law, they aren't going to eagerly take on that burden. But even if loans were interest free, they would have to be repaid, and so each student asks themselves: "Is taking on this debt worth it?" And too often, because the pay off is not only in the future, but not guaranteed, the answer is "No". Sure, the "success rate" is much higher for college graduates, but it's not guaranteed. And how often do we read/hear stories of people who graduated but couldn't get a job in the area of their degree, or that paid what all that effort and expense cost? There must be much more assured and tangible results to convince students to put themselves in such a hole to start their lives.
And this highlights the second problem: students from more rural areas - which your chart shows - are far more "value conscious" and less prone to economic risk because they see the results of that all around them. And college degrees aren't valued highly in these regions.
These are the two areas that need solutions.
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