When College Fails You

For four years while I was in college, something in the back of my mind was always am I getting the best out of college and why does it always seem that there are increasing costs and money not put in the "correct" areas. Or in the beginning, whether this was the right place for me. Then I came across an article this week:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html

It made it me really wonder. Anyone who looks at the economic crisis today will almost certainly point to Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies along with the former Big Three in Detroit. All recipients of bailout checks. However, public universities are never mentioned. They are viewed as institutions to enlighten young men and women and turned them into educated graduates. But that plan has not fulfilled its mission. There are numbers that highlight colleges with low graduation rates in the expected four years or even worse, many more than should; not finishing. Economist Mark Schneider calls these colleges "failure factories" and they are becoming the norm.

Unlike past generations, there is a much higher rate of teenagers enrolling in college, but only half seem to emerge with a bachelor's degree. To put that in perspective, only Italy is worse among the richest countries. This has added to inequality and the slowing of productivity growth. A new study and book recently showed that inadequate precollege education might be the source of the problem. The problem, then, is not exactly the American education system as a whole; just a certain part of it. President Obama and Congress are looking to put a bill together to assist college students with aid and more importantly, create more programs to life the graduation rates of college students. This is hopefully get many thinking about the growing problem that truly exists: focusing more on completion than enrollment. Colleges are not held accountable for why students start, but don't finish. With "Crossing the Finish Line", there is a book to show that more can be done.

A big problem that the book's authors diagnose is an concept they call "under-matching". There are several students who choose not to attend the best college they got into for mostly financial reasons or to be closer to home. Going to a less selective school means you will be in a school that most likely has a lower graduation rate. Well-off students generally go to the schools of their choice and often graduate at a higher rate mostly because those schools do the best job of producing graduates. They have on campus resident halls and graduation is the norm. While the lower income students who go to the lesser caliber schools don't have that and are at institutions where drop-outs are the norm. Administrators often make excuses for students not graduating and policy makers hand out money based on enrollment and not graduation. To me that is a real big problem. That seems be really wrong and it goes unnoticed. In addition, upperclassmen cost schools more money than freshmen and that might be an incentive for schools to allow students to drop out.

There has been progress, but still a lot of work remains. And it is especially important today with the state of the economy. Workers with a bachelor's degree made 54% more on average than those who didn't finish college. You figure how that adds up over time and all the student who never finish the race that is college. How much longer will colleges be allowed to let students fail? That is not what they were created to do. Stop putting more concern in the money and put more in the young men and women, whom who say you have faith in when they enter, but ignore them when they arrive. Human beings aren't meant to be treated as robots or a pawn in some game. Education is supposed to be a corner stone of this country. It is about time that everyone involved starts treating it like that.