College Graduation Rates Stink

The New York Times reports that over 50% of colleges have graduation rates below 10% after six years. Can you imagine the grad rate after four years? Ha!

There are a couple factors here:

1. Students are accepted to institutions who have no business being there.
   
2. Public schools suck. It's an easy mantra to repeat, but it's true.
3. Colleges make money the longer people stay. They make money if someone fails. They make money if someone succeeds.

I know many young people, very smart young people, who are taking five years to finish a degree because of malicious scheduling by their institutions. Classes that are offered at times that work and are prerequisites get switched around, pulled or otherwise changed. Oops! Another semester. Ignorant advisors can really mess up a kid's progress.

The student can be a pawn. But that is not what is going on to explain the above numbers. High Schools stink. A kid taking regular high school classes is in for a shock. MIT, as I noted before, was stunned with incoming Freshmen' lack of physics knowledge and went so far as to create a curriculum for high schools, but guess what? Teachers didn't want to take the free seminars to learn this innovative and effective curriculum.

With the new tech economy, students not cut out for sit-on-your-butt learning, kinesthetic learners for example, are stuck. Apprenticeships seem to be a thing of the past--quaint old-fashioned notions not suited to the new economy.

Inaccurate self-assessments are also a modern day scourge. Everyone thinks they are rocket scientists these days. Just as everyone rates themselves as "above average" drivers, everyone rates their thinkin' right up there, too. College can be a shock to an average-smart student who did well in high school through sheer will or grade inflation.

And one more thing. Since when did it become acceptable to take five or six years or seven to finish up a degree? It prolongs the inevitable and can cost so much in the long run.

Having tried it nearly all ways, I found working full time and going to school part-time excruciating. Full-time school and part-time work was easier. And at a certain point in grad school, I just had to focus on my studies. I had forty contact hours in my fourth trimester at Chiropractic College. It wasn't the toughest semester academically, believe it or not, but there are only so many hours in a day.

The overall cause of the college failure rate is economic. Colleges have a vested interest in accepting anyone with two brain lobes whether anything is in them or not. Who cares if it saddles a kid with mounds of debt?

It's not all dark and nefarious. It is very democratic to accept everyone and then see who thrives. I would hate for the converse situation to be the norm--where a smart high school slacker is held back and not allowed into college just 'cuz his grades stink. A good I.Q. Test and SAT score should ameliorate that problem, even still.

Bottom line, if a college accepts someone, they should have the expectation that he or she will graduate. How will that square with Affirmative Action? The colleges play games accepting anyone and everyone to pump up numbers knowing full well the student will bail after a semester or two. It keeps the institution law-abiding. It doesn't mar the schools reputation to have a dumb-head graduate claiming to be an alumnus.

The only one who loses is the student.