Ever have one of those nightmares where you're back in school and you forget to take the final exam? It's a reality for 37 million Americans who have some college experience but no degree. Although record numbers of high school graduates have enrolled in college over the past few years, their odds of finishing remain low. Only 56 percent of full-time students complete four-year bachelor's degrees within six years. At community colleges, where half of all freshmen enroll, the track record is even worse: Just three of 10 full-time students earn their two-year associate's degrees within three years.
Getting diplomas in the hands of more people would be a huge boost for the U.S. economy. During the past three decades, the United States has slipped from first among nations to 10th in the percentage of people holding a college degree, even as the job market has eroded for Americans without one. Increasingly, this failure has constrained household incomes and harmed the nation's economic growth and competitiveness.
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My experience in the classroom tells me that many students are not prepared to produce college level work, neither academically or emotionally. Schools can and should test and require remedial classes to ensure they can write and think critically so they can succeed however there is often a push to get them through as quickly as possible. This is the downfall of the customer service model academia had adopted. However regarding not being emotionally prepared to handle stress and meet deadlines this is not the universities job anymore than it will be the students employers job to help them succeed. Sink or swim kiddies.
ReplyDeleteEducation isn't just about truth, wisdom, and knowledge or the acquisition of specific skills. It's also a test of personal character. To complete a degree requires not only talent and intelligence but also integrity and perseverance. I finished my Ph. D. largely because I stubbornly refused to give up as I saw quitting as a personal failure.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, our post-secondary institutions are filled by people who simply don't have, to borrow the well-known phrase made popular by Tom Wolfe's book, "The Right Stuff". Sadly, many people are being denied a proper education because there is only so many spaces available and those students who shouldn't be there occupy a lot of them.
I, personally, think that everyone graduating high school should work in retail or food service for at least a year. That way they get a good hard look at the real world, and everyone would be a lot nicer to each other.
ReplyDeleteThe trick, as others have pointed out above, and as the latter part of the article acknowledges, is not so much "getting diplomas in the hands of more people," but making sure those people get an actual college education on the way to picking up said diploma. The ideas they suggest -- better funding, academic support for those who need it -- strike me as pretty good ones. I'd also be in favor of a system that is tougher on people who aren't making the grade, kicking them out for at least a year to do the kind of work CrayonEater mentions, but also welcoming when they seek to come back (perhaps starting with success in a single community college class). I do see the argument for trying to help students get through college before "life gets in the way," but sometimes, I think, it works in the other direction: students acquire the life skills necessary to succeed in college by spending a few years at a minimum-wage job, or in the military (or some other sort of national/international service), or trying to juggle parenthood and low-paid work. If we're going to invest some money in solving the problem -- and I think we need to do that -- we need to invest it wisely, with people who have shown an ability to make good use of the time it buys. That certainly can mean high school graduates who are fully ready for college (and/or ready to work hard in community college to become so), but it also might mean people who have proven their maturity and basic life skills in other ways.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think certain graduate programs should revise their requirements for potential applicants to include actual time putting into practice what they had learned as undergrads. I've encountered many profs and grad students who, smart and educated as they were, had no idea of how things were done in the real world because they studied from Grade 1 to their last graduate degree without a break. To them, if a problem didn't have a paper-and-pencil solution, then it couldn't be solved.
DeleteMy field is engineering, so this might not apply to every graduate program. Many of the profs I had as an undergrad either spent time in industry themselves or worked with people there. Many of my classmates and I understood this and appreciated their insights. Since we were going into the real world, it helped to know what was in store for us.
One thing I learned from practicing my profession in industry was how to organize time and resources. When one has a contract for a project, one has to operate with a limited budget from which to acquire equipment, materials, and services. That money has to be spent wisely and effectively.
As well, there are deadlines that have to be met and time is money, which, also, has to be spent wisely. Documents have to be prepared and specific objectives met, for which unpaid overtime is sometimes required. If those objectives aren't accomplished by the applicable deadline, there may be penalties, such as cancellation of the remainder of that contract which, in the long run, might also mean no more paycheques. Even applying for a grant would have been familiar to me as I was involved with the preparation of bids.
Without it, I don't think I would have been able to eventually finish my Ph. D. It wasn't just that it involved being organized that allowed me to accomplish that. Completing that degree required stubborn resolve, putting in the maximum effort, and refusing to quit, things I acquired while working as an engineer in industry.
One of my grandfathers would definitely have agreed with you. He was a CPA who earned what we'd now call an associate's degree sometime before WWI, while doing work that basically amounted to an apprenticeship, followed by taking the CPA exam. Despite what would now seem like a shockingly inadequate education, he passed the exam, became a partner in his firm, eventually served as head of a national professional organization, and, late in his career and life, helped write a report on education for accountants. He wasn't averse to the aspiring CPAs of the 1950s being required to get a Bachelor's degree, but, not surprisingly, he objected quite strongly to the experience requirement being reduced in favor of coursework. He felt that experience was vital (and, given the fact that his opinion was expressed in a dissent at the back of the report, I'm under the impression that he lost).
DeletePersonally, I love to have returning students in my classes. They're generally paying for it themselves, they have seen reality with their own eyes, they don't miss a class, turn stuff in on time and they STAPLE THEIR PAPERS! :D
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of these dropouts have real college experience of University of Phoenix college experience?
ReplyDeleteIn other words, how much of this is a real problem and how much of this is about students falling for a scam.
If my provost starts yammering on one more more time about how we need to be more like the University of Phoenix since they are so wildly successful (and by successful, he means in terms of profitability), I am going to be forced to use my tenured status to protect me after I'm done lambasting him.
DeleteThe other day I wanted to chat with a former colleague and called the place I used to teach at. As I was navigating my way through the voice mail, the institution was constantly being referred to as a "student success centre".
DeleteOuch! Things sure changed in the 10 years since I quit there and it doesn't sound like they were for the better.
I would be in favour of making 1 year's experience of the real world mandatory between high school and university. Working or volunteering. I think it would make a huge difference in the attitude students bring to university.
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