Jordan Weissmann at the Atlantic reports on the high dropout rate in the US.
Just 56 percent of students who embark on a bachelor's degree program finish within six years, according to a 2011 Harvard study titled Pathway's to Prosperity. Just 29 percent of those who seek an associates degree obtain it within three years. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, just 46 percent of Americans complete college once they start, worst among the 18 countries it tracks.
We're behind Slovakia. Slovakia.
I was a co-author on a paper many years ago that was commissioned by CUNY to look at why good students dropped out CUNY. They gave us a huge random sample of students who had grades of C and above. We sent them a survey, and did phone interviews and focus groups. So, why did they drop out?
Family matters were a big problem. So was the cost. Some transferred. Also, students dropped out, because they had no support from the school. They needed a class to graduate, but the school wasn't offering it until next year. Or they had no idea what classes to take. Or they didn't know who their adviser was. Or their adviser was rude. Most of them didn't consider themselves as dropouts. They explained that they were taking a break.
Yes, I have higher ed on the brain right now. I'll try changing the subject.
Apt. 11d 
The CUNY paper sounds like an interesting view on why good students don’t finish. What I really wonder is how much of our drop-out rate relates to encouraging students to attend college who either aren’t mature enough or aren’t academically capable of finishing college. It drives me crazy when admissions lowers standards while at the same time administration bemoans the high number of students failing college algebra. Countries with exclusive admissions standards SHOULD have higher completion percentages!
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All of this should come with a qualification: Europe’s youth unemployment is much more severe than America’s. But that doesn’t necessarily mean their education system is getting it wrong.
The operation was a complete success! Unfortunately, the patient died.
Shouldn’t Slovakia be trying to figure out how to turn all of their unemployed graduates into kids with 3 semesters at CUNY and a job?
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“According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, just 46 percent of Americans complete college once they start, worst among the 18 countries it tracks.”
“We’re behind Slovakia. Slovakia.”
I’m betting Slovakia doesn’t let nearly as many people into BA-type institutions.
Also, bear in mind that in the East bloc (don’t know about Western Europe), the universities/institutes/colleges historically don’t just accept students who years later choose a course of study. Traditionally, you pass subject exams and enter into a particular department with a strict program of study and there is no lollygagging about “finding yourself” while taking a bunch of different courses. You better have found yourself in high school.
Also, at least in Russia, students are substantially younger than in the US when they start higher education. In Russia in particular, the existence of military conscription encourages a lot of young men to stick with higher education who would otherwise find it uncongenial.
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In the US, it’s possible that more favorable employment opportunities encourage college students to drop out. In some other countries, students may stick faithfully to their courses of study knowing that there’s nothing waiting for them outside.
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I think Amy’s right. Countries with higher percentage of starters who finish college probably have a lower percentage of starters.
If we could identify that 54% with perfect accuracy and tell them, “You’re never going to graduate, so don’t bother,” should we? Would that be an improvement? Or is 3 semesters of college better than none?
Or, on the other hand, “around 70 percent will try and take at least some college courses within two years of graduating high school.” Is the goal to get all 70% through to graduation? Do we want to increase that 70%? That would probably lead to an even higher percentage not graduating. If we can get the entrance and graduation rates up to 100%, we’ll have even more people at Occupy Wall Street protests complaining that they went to college and now can only get jobs as ditch diggers.
I don’t think we can even think about the problem “Why the drop out rate?” until we can figure out what the “correct” system would look like.
Meanwhile, the real problem with “Slovakia” is that, because it was the second half of the name when I was growing up, always sounds to me like it’s just a suffix. It’s like someone saying they are from “Istan.”
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“Or, on the other hand, “around 70 percent will try and take at least some college courses within two years of graduating high school.” Is the goal to get all 70% through to graduation?”
We were talking about the advantages of an a la carte approach a few days ago. It may be that taking a few courses is just what some people need. If a person is starting a business, they might need a composition course so that their emails and advertising don’t sound stupid, plus a marketing course, plus an intro to bookkeeping course. That might be exactly the package that they need.
There are also a lot of people who (at least right this minute) just need to take some ESL courses.
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Two of my siblings didn’t finish college, for different reasons. Both are doing well. To my mind, both would be wise to finish (though for different reasons) but it’s also the case that both are much better off having done the part of college that they did than they would be if they’d done none at all. (One is a police officer, and couldn’t have been hired w/o having done a certain number of credits. The other, before becoming a full-time mother after moving, was essentially all of the marketing department for a small-town communications company in Washington State, where the skills she learned in marketing classes in college were actually really useful.)
And, the “We’re behind Slovakia. Slovakia.” stuff is just annoying and stupid. Slovakia is, in basically every way, a wildly different place than the US. I’m really doubtful that you can make meaningful comparisons on things like this between it and the US, at least not with out taking really great care.
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Slovakia isn’t that different than all of the U.S. Something like 1/4 of all Slovakian immigrants to the U.S. live in the Pittsburgh area (or did until the mills closed). In a certain sense (a not entirely accurate one), Czechoslovakia was started in Pittsburgh.
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One thing to remember about dropout rates is they include students who transfer and finish elsewhere. They don’t track transfers at all. They also don’t track those who really do take a break and then finish. So the numbers may not be an accurate representation of reality.
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Absolutely, Laura. We probably don’t have an accurate number of college dropout rates. And, Matt, is right, too. Those who dropout, may still get benefits from college. I like to think that every person who took my Intro to American Government class will walk out as a better participator in politics.
But, but, but…. There is also a sizable number of people who invest a lot of time and money in college and walk out with little knowledge, few new skills, and a student loan burden. Can colleges do a better job helping them get their BAs? Having that degree is shown in countless studies to provide people with a higher lifetime earning power than people with some college credits.
Yes. Colleges can do better. They have to make a point of helping kids who have complicated family lives and no knowledge of how to get through college. College advisers could be doing a much better job. Some kids need a lot of handholding. If we are going to admit kids with these backgrounds and take their money, then we also have to provide them with the support to figure out complicated university bureaucracies, help them plan financially for school, and help them line up their career goals with appropriate courses and majors.
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Not every university has a full range of courses.
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“..But, but, but…. There is also a sizable number of people who invest a lot of time and money in college and walk out with little knowledge, few new skills, and a student loan burden. Can colleges do a better job helping them get their BAs?”
Well, Courtney Munna has her BA and is out a hundred grand: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/more-on-cortney-munnas-student-loan-saga/
And, it looks like she got a pretty swell education, but the hundred grand is a pretty big albatross across anyone’s neck. I think college needs to cost less, that most careers are never going to spin out an extra hundred thousand that the graduate can pay back between 25 and 35 along with setting up a household and having couple-three kids. And let’s throw the $100,000 in lost wages the student didn’t get during the four years. Ouch!
Western Governors and Khan Academy should be a big part of the future.
I’ve been squirrelling away money so my kids can join Bluto at College. College was wonderful for me. I don’t know how you provide the Animal House experience – or late-night dorm bull sessions with kids whose experiences can inform your own – at Western Governors or Khan. It’s a problem. But we can’t take a hundred thousand in debt and a hundred thousand in lost wages from most high school graduates and not leave their lives in ruins.
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Speaking of transfers, I wonder how college transfers work in other developed countries, and how much credit is portable. We complain a lot about loss of credits in the US, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were much easier to transfer credit in the US, which would tend to increase the appearance of high drop-out rate vis a vis other countries if US students are freer to move around. My feeling about Russia is that you would need to start on the absolute ground floor of a new academic program, and I suspect many other countries are similarly rigid.
Not that US higher education isn’t a disaster for many marginal students. My current favorite case study is a woman who got $80k in student loans for a journalism degree she didn’t finish and now works doing data entry for $30k a year.
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If they invested a lot of time and money and left with little knowledge, few new skills and a debt burden, were they wrong to leave before incurring an even bigger debt burden? Or were they somehow going to gain lots of knowledge and new skills in the last part of college?
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But, but, but…. There is also a sizable number of people who invest a lot of time and money in college and walk out with little knowledge, few new skills, and a student loan burden. Can colleges do a better job helping them get their BAs? Having that degree is shown in countless studies to provide people with a higher lifetime earning power than people with some college credits.
But how much of that is effect, and how much is cause? Going to Harvard is shown to increase lifetime earnings — by exactly the same amount as being admitted to Harvard and not going.
The reasons that people drop out of college overlap considerably with the reasons that people can’t hold down a good job long term. (“Complicated lives.”) More hand holding may get them further down the road, but eventually you’re going to realize you are now graduating a lot more people who didn’t have the organizational skills to figure out on their own what classes they needed to graduate from college.
I don’t see lots of lost income potential if we can turn a large chunk of the people you are worried about into people with little knowledge, few skills, huge debt burdens, and a BA.
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“I don’t see lots of lost income potential if we can turn a large chunk of the people you are worried about into people with little knowledge, few skills, huge debt burdens, and a BA.”
Plus, if we do manage that, each individual will be competing within an ever larger and larger pool of BAs. They’ll be investing more and more time and resources just to run in place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen's_race
Now, if they actually are going to be more skilled and better organized, that’s an entirely different deal.
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Yes. Colleges can do better. They have to make a point of helping kids who have complicated family lives and no knowledge of how to get through college. College advisers could be doing a much better job. Some kids need a lot of handholding. If we are going to admit kids with these backgrounds and take their money, then we also have to provide them with the support to figure out complicated university bureaucracies, help them plan financially for school, and help them line up their career goals with appropriate courses and majors.
Wouldn’t all that be good things to teach in high school? Trying to do it in college, with the meter running, is like trying to build the road under your taxi at 80 miles an hour.
Not counting transfers is increasing the number of “drop outs.” A friend claims 1/3 of the college-aged children of friends transfer from their original college. These are not kids from challenging backgrounds.
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Not counting transfers is increasing the number of “drop outs.” A friend claims 1/3 of the college-aged children of friends transfer from their original college.
Yes, but I am sure a large percentage of those are transfers from 2 to 4 year colleges after the second year, so they never actually “dropped out” of anywhere. And that’s really what we should be encouraging for marginal students — going for a 2 year degree and then transferring for a BA if they “have what it takes.”
It seems like you lower the dropout rate tons without any effort or expense if you could just turn “people with at least two years toward a bachelors” into “successful students with Associate’s Degrees.”
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“Back where I come from, we have community colleges, seats of great learning, where men go to become great HVAC techs. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.”
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Yes, but I am sure a large percentage of those are transfers from 2 to 4 year colleges after the second year, so they never actually “dropped out” of anywhere.
For the nation as a whole, perhaps. In my particular example, though, I’m sure the students were transferring from one 4 year college or university to another. Now, our local high school has high SAT scores, but the college counseling is not good.
I also blame Facebook and texting. Kids stay in touch with their high school friends. The grass is always greener, etc.
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It’s actually kind of amazing to be able to get a substantial number of 18-22 year olds to stick to one thing for four years. Think how many people can’t manage to be married for four years, stick around until their kids are 4, or stick to one job for four years.
I have a couple of close relatives who teach community college, in particular the remedial courses. There’s a subset of their CC students who just can’t overcome the high school mentality of looking for good excuses not to be in class. They’re not thinking in terms of the fact that the more class they miss, the further they get behind. One of my relatives was particularly ticked off by a student who was going to miss class because his dog had a vet appointment scheduled. (Now that I google it, a lot of vets have Saturday hours, so that excuse was spectacularly lame.) There are also some very messed up, barely functional people taking CC classes.
On the other hand, the community colleges really do manage to provide a second chance to students who screwed up high school but who have potential. One of my relatives’ star pupils went through high school with “D is for diploma!” as her motto, but now that she’s in her 20s, she’s taking every course she can sign up for and working hard. Some other students (very likely autistic) had neglectful and chaotic upbringings, but are finally able to shine at CC.
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Walter Russell Mead had a nice line today: “America’s current educational model conflates two different things: training and education. The difference between them can be fuzzy, but they are not identical. Training needs to be much cheaper, more convenient and more widely available. Education is important, but will have to be provided in new and less costly ways.”
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