There are a lot of children with affluent parents who drop out of college… just saying.
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That’s true, but they drop out at far lower rates than poor students. And I think the reasons for dropping out often differ between wealthy and poor students.
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Like other life skills, academic skills need to be learned and practiced on one’s own. “Hand-holding” in primary and secondary schools isn’t really a good thing for college. There’re a lot of students who had too much “hand-holding” prior to college but failed to kick it up a notch when needed in college.
Are you conflating correlation with causation? Few, if any, offspring of the super wealthy are academic superstars. In terms of correlation, parental educational attainment, not wealth, has by far the highest positive correlation with academic success.
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Money can solve a lot of problems, but can also cause some. My kids, out of necessity, had some life experience when they went to college. They knew how to do laundry, the basics of a checking account (although mostly as an ATM and not writing checks), how to cook, how to shop for sales. They didn’t know much about cars or medical insurance and those were areas I wished I had spent more time on. They knew how to book tickets and get through and airport.
If we’d had more money, they could have paid for a laundry service, shopped full price stores, not worried about how much the medical insurance didn’t cover. Alas, we cared.
A friend was academically prepared for college but couldn’t handle the rest. Her mother had done everything for her or told her when to do it.
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So why have formal education? It sure seems like the learning environment has a little something to do with it.
Kick what up a notch? Perhaps you are conflating “hand-holding” with lack of academic rigor? As prep school parents can tell you, a school can be simultaneously rigorous and offer the type of “hand-holding” to which I refer.
By “hand-holding” I mean the things like small class sizes, meaningful access to teachers and professors, ample academic and non-academic support, a safe and accessible physical environment, affordability, opportunities for hands-on learning and non-classroom educational experiences, a supportive peer groups, leadership opportunities, a sense of community and belonging, a solid family support system, etc. It is no coincidence that these are factors that are often discussed here when families are evaluating their educational options.
I don’t think I am. Are you? Otherwise I don’t understand your point about the kids of “super wealthy” not being “academic superstars.” So far as I can tell, that’s totally irrelevant.
Okay. So to modify the @ucbalumnus summary:
If “preparation” requires having wealthy and well-educated parents, then most kids aren’t adequately “prepared” for college.
I suppose we could add in a few other factors as well, but the point would remain the same.
I wasn’t talking about rigor. What I’m saying is that the students who needed or were used to “hand-holding” in primary/secondary schools may find themselves in an unfamiliar and disadvantaged position in college, when such “hand-holding” isn’t available and they need to perform on their own.
If wealth is the best predictor of academic success as you claimed, wouldn’t the offspring of the super wealthy have the greatest academic successes?
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I suppose this is possible for some students, but it is certainly not the norm. The types of students who have had access to the kind of quality education I euphamistically refer to as “hand-holding” have a much better chance at academic success than those who do not.
Sorry, still not interested in semantical gotcha games. You know to what I was referring, and it has nothing to do with the kids of the super wealthy.
If we assume that your answer to the title question is “yes”, what are the more immediate actions that you suggest can be taken, since “improving K-12 education” is likely a long term complex project?
- How can unprepared (including both academic and non-academic unpreparedness) students be identified?
- While in high school or applying to college?
- After they have started college, but before they fail badly enough that they are unlikely to recover?
- Once identified, what should be done?
- Can they be made better prepared for college before college?
- Can they be made better prepared as they enter college? (e.g. the University of Texas example for certain types of unpreparedness)
American colleges are unique in the world in the amount of infantilizing they already do. Other countries have poor students, and rich students, and manage to have just focused academic instruction in their colleges which both groups seems to handle just fine. I am not sure why so many seem to think American kids couldn’t possibly handle being treated like British kids, for example, or even Canadians.
Personally, I doubt most public universities will have the financial resources to offer the nirvana some posters seek, but good luck to those who do. I dont know of any college anywhere that offers the laundry list of support in a prior post, such as a “solid family support system”.
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Given the differences in the respective educational systems, I’m not really concerned with whether Americans could handle being treated like British or Canadian students. The premise of this thread is that an alarming number of American kids can’t even handle the American system.
- One possible response is to blame the kids and their high schools, and to insist that if the kids can’t handle it they probably shouldn’t be in college anyway.
- Another possible response is to follow UT Austin’s approach and implement cost effective measures that make success more likely.
The second approach seems preferable to me. It seems to have worked, and it is more cost effective in the long run than keeping out or flunking out a large segment potential graduates. Plus it is more in line with the mission of most public universities.
“Solid family support” is the sort of thing that can enhance a students chance for success at college, and it is something that many do not have (see the primary example in the article, for example.) Obviously it is provided by outside the university. But you knew that.
Beyond that, most of the list is simply what wealthy, educated parents consider important components of a quality education. Seems incongruous that when it comes to trying to give poor people access to the same things, it is written off as an “infantilizing” pursuit of “nirvana.”
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My impression is that it has skewed class sizes and demographics for a couple of teachers at my oldest daughters’ school. Or at least that is what she thinks, but no adult has told me this information so I am not positive that I am getting the full story.
The premise of this thread is that some students that are arriving at college have not been prepared for the challenges they will face.
The reality is there are many students that won’t be attending college that are potentially also ill prepared for challenges they’ll also face because of similar unpreparedness. Why is it some are ignoring those students and only focusing specifically on those having matriculated to college?
The “second approach” is only preferable to the cohort that will be struggling in college. The harder approach is to look at the primary and secondary education and see what can be improved upon there. That would ultimately help to improve everyone’s situation. Better prepared for life, no matter what direction that happens to be.
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I think that high schools should offer some workshops, lectures, whatever on various non-academic college-related topics. I doubt this would ever be widely implemented, but it could make a difference for some unprepared/underprepared students staying in college vs not staying in college.
The last week of class for our HS has what they refer to as “project week.” Students are required to attend and you basically get a pass or fail grade. You get to decide what topic you’re going to participate in for ‘project week’ for the entire week. The teachers come up with the topics. Last year, the most popular one for all of the high schoolers was the one that the physics teacher came up with.
He called it “Adulting 101.” It covered stuff like:
- how to put together a household budget
- how to handle simple banking stuff
- how to do simple car stuff like changing a flat tire
- practical advice on money matters like applying for loans, credit cards, and such
- grocery shopping & how to cook simple meals that are affordable
- how to get your utilities turned on for your apartment when you move in
- negotiating with roommates
You get the idea. I thought the idea was brilliant and made D24 go…she was mad. LOL.
Sometimes, the school counselors’ ‘project week’ topic is all about college application essays…that one is usually geared towards 11th graders who will be entering 12th grade in the fall.
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You know, this has me thinking. Does anyone take home ec type classes anymore? I see the course schedules people post on here for their kids and I don’t remember seeing these life skills type classes on very many kids’ schedules.
My S23 took a personal finance class and a cooking class last year in addition to a full year of study hall. I don’t know if most CC parents would encourage that for junior year or not… It just dawned on me that those types of courses don’t seem super common here or maybe I’ve overlooked it?
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Our HS doesn’t offer home ec classes.
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Our high school doesn’t offer cooking classes. In our district, cooking (and gardening) is taught in the middle schools, and is part of the curriculum for all students. My kids also took private cooking classes, and they are both fine cooks now… I love it when the kids cook dinner 
In our district, personal finance is a graduation requirement and practical life classes are part of our school’s distribution requirements. My kiddos all took the yearlong cooking class. They loved it.
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Identifying unprepared is relatively simple. For example, we can use assessments similar to NAEP’s, but for a broader purpose. My preference would be to annually assess students at every grade level in high school, so that only those who consistently fail to meet the proficiency level would be considered unprepared.
Not everyone needs to go to college right after high school. Those who aren’t ready could be offered vocational trainings, or remedial classes (in secondary school) if they still intend to go to college later. We can’t use colleges to fix the problems of our K-12 system. Colleges are too costly and too unsuitable for that purpose.
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D had required shop classes in middle school but no cooking classes. Personal finance was taught in middle school and then was woven into her senior year Econ class.
Our old district had an amazing career center that junior and seniors could take everything from car mechanic courses to plumbing to culinary arts to med tech. They did half the day at the HS and half at the career center. Wish that type of program was available everywhere!
One of the things that D’s HS did was a very robust mentoring program that sent specially trained upperclassman and guidance counselors into freshman and sophomore classes once/month. The focus was how to be a successful and happy student. They tackled everything from study skills to peer pressure to finding supports. They wanted to be sure everyone felt a sense of belonging and to cultivate everyone’s individual strengths and talents.
Interestingly Purdue’s honor college has a similar mentoring program for freshman.
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Most wealthy kids do not attend liberal arts colleges, where one would find the small classes and professorial attention. The kids in liberal arts colleges are for the most part wealthy, but that is a small fraction of the overall student population.
The wealthy kids at HYPSM still have lectures with hundreds ( didn’t Yale have 1000 in its happiness class?), as do their colleagues at state flagships. College budgets and teaching duties are based upon that financial model. If you want universities to shift to small classes, like high school, and offer the degree of emotional, social, and academic support more typically found in high schools ( and certain liberal arts colleges), the costs will skyrocket and professors will need to change their expectations of work asap. UT has an enormous endowment to support that for at least some of its students. Most colleges do not. UT has spent tens of millions-perhaps hundreds of millions by now-on this program. I dont forsee some huge federal investment in this coming soon for anyone else.
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