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That's pretty good. SA must be doing something right.
As reported on local news channels.
Because they drop out?... move to another part of the state or country?... or Both?
Interesting reporting after the president's education/stay in school speech.
That's pretty good. SA must be doing something right.
Education is the single biggest domestic problem we have going forward in this country and most people have no clue. Those numbers are much worse at many of the cities schools. You remove some of the Northside and NEISD schools and you're looking at schools that barely graduate one out of every 2 students.
College isn't much better
September 9, 2009
Economic Scene
Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates
By DAVID LEONHARDT
If you were going to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you’d probably have to start with the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that brought us the financial crisis. From there, you might move on to Wall Street’s fellow bailout recipients in Detroit, the once-Big Three.
But I would suggest that the list should also include a less obvious nominee: public universities.
At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing.
Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as “failure factories,” and they are the norm.
The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. Among rich countries, only Italy is worse. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed. Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started.
So identifying the causes of the college dropout crisis matters enormously, and a new book tries to do precisely that.
It is called “Crossing the Finish Line,” and its findings are based on the records of about 200,000 students at 68 colleges. The authors were able to get their hands on that data because two of them are pillars of the education establishment: William Bowen (an economist and former Princeton president) and Michael McPherson (an economist and former Macalester College president).
For all the book’s alarming statistics, its message is ultimately uplifting — or at least invigorating.
Yes, inadequate precollege education is a problem. But high schools still produce many students who have the skills to complete college and yet fail to do so. Turning them into college graduates should be a lot less difficult than fixing all of American education.
“We could be doing a lot better with college completion just by working on our colleges,” as Robert Shireman, an Education Department official who has read an early version of the book, says.
Congress and the Obama administration are now putting together an education bill that tries to deal with the problem. It would cancel about $9 billion in annual government subsidies for banks that lend to college students and use much of the money to increase financial aid. A small portion of the money would be set aside for promising pilot programs aimed at lifting the number of college graduates. All in all, the bill would help.
But it won’t solve the system’s biggest problems — the focus on enrollment rather than completion, the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures. “Crossing the Finish Line” makes it clear that we can do better.
•
The first problem that Mr. Bowen, Mr. McPherson and the book’s third author, Matthew Chingos, a doctoral candidate, diagnose is something they call under-matching. It refers to students who choose not to attend the best college they can get into. They instead go to a less selective one, perhaps one that’s closer to home or, given the torturous financial aid process, less expensive.
About half of low-income students with a high school grade-point average of at least 3.5 and an SAT score of at least 1,200 do not attend the best college they could have. Many don’t even apply. Some apply but don’t enroll. “I was really astonished by the degree to which presumptively well-qualified students from poor families under-matched,” Mr. Bowen told me.
They could have been admitted to Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus (graduation rate: 88 percent, according to College Results Online) or Michigan State (74 percent), but they went, say, to Eastern Michigan (39 percent) or Western Michigan (54 percent). If they graduate, it would be hard to get upset about their choice. But large numbers do not. You can see that in the chart with this column.
In effect, well-off students — many of whom will graduate no matter where they go — attend the colleges that do the best job of producing graduates. These are the places where many students live on campus (which raises graduation rates) and graduation is the norm. Meanwhile, lower-income students — even when they are better qualified — often go to colleges that excel in producing dropouts.
“It’s really a waste,” Mr. Bowen says, “and a big problem for the country.” As the authors point out, the only way to lift the college graduation rate significantly is to lift it among poor and working-class students. Instead, it appears to have fallen somewhat since the 1970s.
What can be done?
Money is clearly part of the answer. Tellingly, net tuition has no impact on the graduation rates of high-income students. Yet it does affect low-income students. All else equal, they are less likely to make it through a more expensive state college than a less expensive one, the book shows. Conservatives are wrong to suggest affordability doesn’t matter.
But they are right that more money isn’t the whole answer. Higher education today also suffers from a deep cultural problem. Failure has become acceptable.
Students see no need to graduate in four years. Doing so, as one told the book’s authors, is “like leaving the party at 10:30 p.m.” Graduation delayed often becomes graduation denied. Administrators then make excuses for their graduation rates. And policy makers hand out money based on how many students a college enrolls rather than on what it does with those students.
There is a real parallel here to health care. We pay doctors and hospitals for more care instead of better care, and what do we get? More care, even if in many cases it doesn’t make us healthier.
In education, the incentives can be truly perverse. Because large lecture classes are cheaper for a college than seminars, freshmen are cheaper than upperclassmen. So a college that allows many of its underclassmen to drop out may be helping its bottom line.
If you look closely, you can still find reasons for optimism. A few colleges, like the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, have intensive programs that have raised graduation rates. The State of West Virginia has begun tying student aid to academic progress, and graduation rates there have risen. Washington Monthly magazine has published a new college ranking based in part on graduation rates. (Kudos to Penn State, among others.) When students fill out an online form for federal financial aid, the Obama Education Department now informs them of the graduation rate at any college in which they express interest.
But an enormous amount of work remains, and it’s hard to think of any work that’s more important to the American economy.
Last year, even in the grip of a recession that has spared no group of workers, the gap between what a college graduate earned and what everyone else earned reached a record. Workers with bachelor’s degrees made 54 percent more on average than those who attended college but didn’t finish, according to the Labor Department. Fifty-four percent — just think about how that adds up over a lifetime. And then think about how many students never cross the college finish line.
E-mail: [email protected]
dubya's "privatization" of govt student loans to banks and subsidizing those banks with tax dollars is very similar to "privatizing" Medicare Advantage and then subsidizing private health insurance with $50B so it could compete with cheaper, more efficient Medicare.
Conservative "principles" are scams.
Wow what? It's over 50% in many large cities. Maybe Obama can create some kind of federal bureaucracy to fix the problem. Maybe a Department of Learnin or something.
President Obama cannot change this or any president. The parents have too.
I remember when I was in high school if a student didn't really have any ambition and was comfortable not making anything of themselves, they'd just drop out and take a job in the construction industry. Down here there's probably 1 or 2 degrees of seperation between anybody and somebody who owns or works for a construction crew.
Dropping out might have worked in the past... but I reckon that this economy will make students take a second look at dropping out because that 100% shot at a construction job isn't quite 100% anymore.
I'd say it was 1) Construction jobs 2) Parent's owned a company (usually construction oriented) 3) They were ups and were too stupid/lazy/ s wads to even do well with an easy as curriculum at a public school. 4) Drugs
Ha this statement reminds me of that dating service on MAD TV.
Lowered Expectations.
The only thing MAD TV ever did that even made me smile (except for making fun of that "rollin" song by limp biscuit).
I'm part of that 35%. I graduated in Austin.
You'd almost think it was planned.
Also, what kind of education have those who don't drop out and graduate actually received?
Bobby Lee usually had good skits.
I could never find one. MAD TV only made me angry to watch it. Like not only did it steal my time, but it also stole a piece of me. The fact that it is still on is mind boggling.
1) There is a significant part of the population whose culture teaches that delaying full-time work to get an education is foolish and/or irresponsible.
2) There is a significant part of the population whose culture teaches if a woman gets pregnant, she is supposed to stop her education. Within that group, a fraction still does not believe in educating women at all.
3) Then there are those who hardly have a chance to be educated because they spend their entire childhood with a chaotic home life.
4) Then there are those who might like to finish their education, but have to choose between having enough income to eke out a meager existence and finishing school.
5) Then there are those whose goal in life is to do as little as possible and suck off the resources of the state.
There is never, ever, ever going to be some magic fix to the education system that will raise the graduation rate because the education system is not the problem. The culture of poverty is the problem.
not just parents. it's a little more than just that simplification.
The conversion of schools from places of education to administrative facilities for low security detention and behavior modification has something to do with it too. Declining rates of literacy and the declining ratio of teachers to administrators tell the story. We've never spent more, and gotten less, from our schools.There is never, ever, ever going to be some magic fix to the education system that will raise the graduation rate because the education system is not the problem. The culture of poverty is the problem
and this is also a state to state problem as some states are far above others. but the texas system is pathetic. the fact that we have not been able to figure out how to fund our schools ever since edgewood ISD vs. kirby says a of a lot.
I agree with ES that there are cultural factors involved but it is undeniable that the manner in which we go about educating our children today provides an environment in which these problems are exacerbated.
Its undeniable that children coming from poverty are not in an idle situation to thrive and succeed and there are many factors working against them but to suggest that the only way to correct this is culturally is overly simplistic.
Does this 35% represent any kids in private schools, or just the public option?
In general, the the united states is developing a culture of failure. It's really that simple. Where you don't have dropout gangsters, you have wanna-be dropout gangsters.
Personally, I have to put a lot of the blame on the parents.
let us remember that this is a state to state issue. (further proof that the state governments can be just as bad as the federal government)
Also, let us remember that:
A) Its an individual choice. Sure, your options may suck, but it still is possible to finish an education and hold a job, plenty of examples out there.
B) If they are capable of making a living without an education, why shouldn't they drop out?
On a different point, how is this calculated? Are we including people who moved in the 35%? Are we including people who dropped out, then got their GED?
School doesn't magically make you smart, school doesn't magically make you get a good job. School only works if the individual student makes an effort, and to put it bluntly, the only thing a HS diploma provides is a HS diploma, there is no magical knowledge or skills it grants.
One of my theories though not exercised through scientific data is the lack of "commitment".
I have noticed over the years that children are increasingly becoming less adherent to commitment. In today's ever esculating presense of immediate gratification...many just give up on move on to something else that provides that gratification.
The causes of this behavior are as multiple as the behavior itself. I know as a parent my children cringe when I lecture them on perservering at any one goal. Attention spans are being shortened and you can see that it mentally hurts them to deal with anything that requires commitment to achieving.
Today our education system doesn't teach children more so than it prepares children to pass a pre-analytical test in order to move forward. But in making it easier for students to pass...they have also created a lack of commitment to learning.
Just my 2 cents...I look forward to dispute or validation.
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