Article: "The hardest test of freshman year? Survival."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/10/the-hardest-test-of-freshman-year-survival/?utm_term=.326c1bcdb195

I found this statistic surprising:

Ah…the criticism of “colleges” who aren’t taking care of the poor freshman. Read a book, author. There’s a ton of literature out there (books, articles in scholarly publications and popular ones) that detail how the freshman experience can be lonely. Talk to some people on any school’s first year experience team. They work really hard to get the freshmen connected. I doubt you can find a school anywhere without first year programming aimed at getting freshmen engaged and comfortable. Tinto’s been big since the 90’s. That’s 20 years of higher ed focusing on engagement. Bottom line, you can’t drop a bunch of teens who’ve been told their whole life that the world isn’t a safe place for them (this kind of took over as our parenting “style” post 9-11, replacing the “you’re so special” of the millennial) ALONE on a college campus expect the college to make it all better right away. Transitions take time. Yes, colleges have to keep their programming, but students need to come ready to engage, and not, as the author points out, be a spectator.

@ordinarylives I agree – My kids freshman experiences by the colleges are a far cry from the drop and figure it out that I had in the 1981. My current husband and I took a TON of criticism from folks (you wouldn’t believe how much) when we left our respective home states, got married and brought our children to a completely different state and started a new life when they were ages 14, 15, 17 and 18 – everyone had to make a new way, find new friends, start a new school. You would have thought by what people said to us we were sending them to juvenile hall or something. IMO it made them resilient- they all know now that it takes a bit of time but it can and will happen and all so far are having (or have had) a great college experience. (and everyone fared just fine in HS as well)

True. Our current system produces more drop outs than graduates.

That suggests to me that things should be different. Very different.

The biggest insight, I think, is that we send way way too many kids to our existing model of 4 year residential college. Which is very expensive, has poor graduation outcomes, and isn’t the economic job/career ticket that it used to be decades ago.

More community college. More technical college. More apprenticeships. Lower costs. While everyone needs more education in today’s economy, the current college model (which is too expensive) just isn’t what a lot of those kids want or need.

While colleges could certainly do things differently, a big explanation for the 50+% drop out rate is that many of these kids really shouldn’t be there in the first place. But there’s a lot of pressure to go to traditional college, and the more appropriate alternatives really don’t exist or are respected.

Maybe only 50% of the kids should’ve been there in the first place?

@frabgot, good point.

The dropout rates at highly selective colleges are low.

At my own alma mater, which is tied for 14th on US News’s National Universities list, 97% of freshmen return for a second year and 94% graduate within six years.

I think that probably at least 99% of them should have been there in the first place.

“After a decade of building luxury dorms with private bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, a few colleges are beginning to move back to the basics”

Where are all these posh colleges? I sent three kids off to college. They also attended summer camps where they stayed in dorms in colleges all over the country. All of their dorms were old and crappy. Where are these places?

In all seriousness the reason so many kids drop out of college is that too many of them are going to college.

Yup the 50 percent figure has been around a long time but it feels that unless a kid is failing high school off to college they go and if they haven’t even blown their own nose in their life off to college they go.

Yet colleges that have become more selective in the past decade and now have high retention and graduation rates are denigrated as “gaming” the system and seeking to climb the rankings.

Someone who has a 900 SAT and a 2.5 high school GPA should likely not be going to college. Yet there are many state directional and struggling private colleges that will admit them and take their tuition.

Our high school does a good job of telling students and parents that going to a top college does not really matter, which is good for them to learn.

However, they do a poor job of teaching them that working to achieve a solid gpa and test score still matters because there is a significant correlation between them and the student’s odds of completing college. Students and parent should understand that better and earlier.

If it even encouraged them to improve their gpa by 0.1 and their ACT by one point, in aggregate, that would have a positive impact on graduation rates.

Agree that not all students who go to college should. Years ago not as many chose a four year college.

I disagree with the article stating freshmen have too many choices. Before a student starts in the fall s/he has a defined list of classes picked out with the help of an advisor.

I also do not think college freshmen need the support level the article does. Those who are independent will thrive at many schools where there are large lectures. Others should be at other schools. We do not need to continue treating college students like the children they were.

The part the author has right is the high school experience preparing students for adulthood. Less coddling, more decision making on the part of the student (less interference from parents in deciding classes is one thing).

@wis75 “(less interference from parents in deciding classes is one thing).”

I am interested in your experience with this. In my experience, parents being involved is a positive thing in most cases. Sure some take it way too far, but most parents are reasonable. The kids that seem to have the most difficulty are the ones with largely disengaged parents. Is your experience different from that?

Having dropped my freshman daughter off to college about a month ago, this really hits home for us. Her school does a really good job of getting the students oriented before classes start, but the thing she finds disconcerting is the amount of time she has on her hands! We live a pretty structured life, and kids have a pretty regimented existence: school, home, sleep, start over. With only two classes a day, she has a ton of time on her hands–and no one to say, “Hey, why don’t you do . . . now?” We suggested getting a planner and making an attempt to schedule her days. Are there any other tips?

@luckymama64 I guess being a student athlete my daughter is not having the ‘time on my hands’ experience at all!

This really depends on the individual personality of the student as well as their experience during the K-12 stage.

Some students require or enjoy a heavily regimented existence or having others direct how they spend most/all of their time.

Others with more independent and/or creative inclinations tend to strongly chafe at and hate being subjected to the same.

And most students tend to fall somewhere on the spectrum in between those extremes.

One major factor this article doesn’t mention: running out of money. The issue was discussed in passing in a recent Politico piece (search for “micro-grants”), albeit with a focus on seniors, and there are a lot of schools where even Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and work-study combined may not cover all a student’s costs. It doesn’t help that, adjusted for inflation, the maximum Pell Grants is now worth less than in 1975.

Politico piece: http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/top-college-rankings-list-2017-us-news-investigation/

Maximum Pell Grants: https://trends.collegeboard.org/student-aid/figures-tables/maximum-and-average-pell-grants-over-time

I also wonder if correlation is being confused with causation. It’s very possible the factors that cause a student to drop out as a freshman would have an even greater effect on that student in later years - but we never get a chance to find out. So lower dropout rates in later years may be a case of survivor bias, not special challenges associated with freshman year.

On the other hand, there’s research showing freshman-year interventions do make a big difference at the H.S. level, where similar issues - grades drop and attendance is generally lower - drag many students off-track. And raising a student’s grades and attendance during freshman year has benefits that extend into the later years of H.S.

With regards to preventing dropouts and raising graduation rates, I think the Georgia State example in the Politico piece is excellent in a number of ways. Particularly this:

This is why using data as well as an educator’s qualitative judgments is crucial.

Agree!! Well put northwesty.

Re: parent involvement: the book “Paying for the Party” says that students with involved parents who nudge them in the direction of, for example, internships, do lots better. Mentors are good, but without a mentor, better have a parent.

@luckymama64 I can totally relate to the ‘ton of time on her hands’ feeling. That can be a hard thing to adjust to and I did not do it well my freshman year. I’ve been open with my kids about it and have tried to have them learn from my mistakes.

I can also see the point about too many choices for kids. Some majors only have about 8-10 required courses the first two years. Even with an advisor, you still have to distill 100 or more classes into the ones that will help you progress. Engineers have a much more defined path so it’s not as much of an issue for them.