<p>While this article is clearly not directed at the vast majority of CC posters, I do think it raises important points, particularly as regards debt. </p>
<p>And while I don't think it is helpful to be fatalistic about a student's prospects who finishes in the bottom 40% of his high school class, it does remind everyone to be realistic. Junior college (especially in a State like California) just may make a heck of a lot of sense or many.</p>
<p>You know....I was probably in the bottom 50% of my graduating class (HS did not actually rank) and I now have a degree from a top 10 University (non-Ivy) as well as a law degree. Go figure.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Very interesting. I think the article makes a good point that many expensive four-year colleges are recruiting and enrolling freshmen whose odds of finishing college in eight years are low. There are too many twenty-somethings out there with a lot of debt and no degree to show for it. Many students who had poor high school academic records would benefit from a year or two at an inexpensive community college.</p>
<p>Queen's Mom - don't know your background, but let's be honest - at the risk of losing your immodesty (so let me do it) - you are very bright - one does not go to and finish top 10 schools without being very bright - so notwithstanding any high school academic measurements, you belonged in college, and it made sense to invest in college. </p>
<p>I say this in the kindest spirit possible - because to be fair many in the lower half of their high school class are taking too much risk in going to four year schools without a better sense of focus and cost consciousness, and it makes no sense to point to a statistical exception as a guide. </p>
<p>Like I said, this post does not apply to vast majority of CC types. But this fellow has no axe to grind other than help people, and think the article worth reading.</p>
<p>This article highlights a problem with the US education system. We put all children through a prescribed course of study designed to get them into college knowing full well that most of them will not wind up going to college or being successful if they do go. In my opinion, it stems from the disproven but hard to kill idea that intelligence is limited to academia. </p>
<p>If we taught children that there are many different kinds of intelligence, then I believe a lot more of them would leave public schooling with a clear, realistic idea of what they must do next. I am watching some of my son's friends who are recent graduates go through this right now. I provide information and support for alternatives, but how much impact can the mother of a friend have? At least I don't seem to have much. </p>
<p>I have a cousin who struggled with college for years and was unhappy with a serious of poor paying jobs. He finally became a welder. He now supports his family, owns a house and is happy. I know that he represents millions of other people who were misled into believing that college is the key to success and everything else is a distant, somewhat shameful second. </p>
<p>This is a serious problem. I'm glad the author brought it up.</p>
<p>college is not the only path to be successful in life (financially and otherwise). some are just not cut out for college especially those colleges with high tuition. glad this is in parents forum college may not be the answer for YOUR CHILD, and it is downright stupid to insist they attend (the article provides the evidence).</p>
<p>Your story confirms what I often see. Your cousin likely would have liked (and been skilled at) welding at age 18-20. It wouldn't have hurt to start earlier.</p>
<p>I, too, know too many poor high school students (monetarily and academically) who headed off to college mainly because it was expected, they (and/or their parents) wanted the whole college experience for them, and they didn't want to start a "real" job or go to a technical training program. After having incurred lots of costs and lots of debt without earning a degree, these individuals frequently end up spending more to complete an unrelated technical training program, or are working in jobs that do not require any college.</p>
<p>I wonder how a "minimum SAT/ACT" or minimum GPA requirement would fly in this country.
Or at least an indirect requirement, in the sense, that no college (with the exception of community colleges) accepts anyone with lower than that SAT/ACT OR GPA.</p>
<p>I don't think its a good idea necessarily but it may work in producing more competent college graduates.</p>
<p>This article should be in every college counselor office.
I know of one girl who attends a private college. Her GPA is less than 2.0. The school let her continue taking classes. She was surprised when she tried to transfer to a state school and was told her GPA was too low.
Now she is stuck in a school she can barely afford.
I think it's criminal when colleges let kids in whose prospects for employment are not going to be better when they leave.</p>
<p>What I do like about the system in the US is that everyone has a shot at attending college. I'm not particularly interested in minimum thresholds or standardized tests or any of those sorts of barriers to opportunity. What I do not like is that sometimes it feels like the colleges and universities are bending over backwards to try to accomodate kids for extended periods of time where it is patently obvious for whatever reason that maybe the kids just don't belong in college. It's up to the parents to pull the plug and up to the colleges to eject kids that aren't performing or aren't capable of thriving in that type of environment not to create barriers to the initial entry.</p>
<p>This is a link to a video from the TED conference where the speaker talks...with humor... about how we need to re-arrange how we are educating our kids, and how we are defining intelligence. ze's</a> page :: zefrank.com: more for parents</p>
<p>The stat from the article shouldn't be too surprising. Only about 1/3 of all adults over 25 in this country have a 4-year degree. The people that don't earn them have to come from somewhere, and those from the lower part of their HS class who attempt 4-year colleges are going to be disproportionately represented.</p>
<p>I was not a great student in high school, never considered not going to college, went, was on academic probation after first semester, berely hung in there, finally got serious and went on to get a Master's. It was an important and enlightening experience. I think it would have benefitted any and everyone, BUT ... back in the stone age it was only $225 a semester. Changes the whole scenario.</p>
<p>The real issue remains that our biggest problem in education is the level of preparation for college. Most of our 4,000 colleges have been forced to offer classes at the level of what high school should be. It is time to realize that most of 30,000 high schools are simply awful at preparing students for a tertiary education despite failing to graduate a huge number of students. </p>
<p>While we bask in the glory of having many of the very best universities in the world, we prefer to ignore how low the level of education truly is at the thousands of colleges in the country that are forced to offer a combination of remedial courses and easy grading policies. </p>
<p>Looking at the college is missing the target by a mile; the real problems are in our K-12 system that clings to a one-for-all system of public education that believes in pedagogy over academic contents.</p>
<p>My younger brother failed out of two colleges and technical school by the age of 23. It cost my parents a lot of money, and now mom looks back and says, "Not every kid is meant to go to college, why didn't we see that?"</p>
<p>But now that it's 20 years later, brother regrets the opportunities he wasted. He is in a physically demanding outdoor job, often in brutally hot weather, and his health is suffering (back trouble, headaches, etc). </p>
<p>I think he would have been a perfect candidate to take a couple of years off after high school, work, decide what he wanted to do (and realize the value of a dollar), then go to technical school. </p>
<p>But now he has a family & financial obligations, and he's so exhausted at the end of his work day he can't even consider going to school at night.</p>
<p>I do think the idea that every kid should go straight from high school to a 4 year college should be re-examined.</p>
<p>The problem with this article is that college kids are not cars or tires. A college education as a "product" is much more variable than an actual good, and it relies very much upon how much a student utilizes his/her resources, and, as a "product," it is reviewed subjectively.</p>
<p>"The real issue remains that our biggest problem in education is the level of preparation for college. Most of our 4,000 colleges have been forced to offer classes at the level of what high school should be. It is time to realize that most of 30,000 high schools are simply awful at preparing students for a tertiary education despite failing to graduate a huge number of students." </p>
<p>Xiggi- that is developing into an substantial issue. Currently in Colorado there is a major (albeit behind the scenes) discourse about the number and type of remedial courses which should be offered at the collegiate level. And one of the more controversial aspects is how this problem can be dropped onto the CC's, essentially making them function as remedial institutions for remedial institutions. </p>
<p>From a pragmatic perspective its not entirely surprising that a BA/BS/etc doesn't mesh with all the hype about enhanced earnings and etc. If we have a situation that lower echelon degrees are going to be little more than corrections for what should have been done within the public schools...it's inevitable the credibility of these degrees will decline.
If this trend continues a bachelors will be a very expensive way to get what should have been obtained with a HS diploma-and from the employment versus debt perspective a poor choice. </p>
<p>But one of the hidden aspects driving the situation is the context that academia has become very closely linked to profit, be this directly corporately controlled or indirectly affected by those same agendas. </p>
<p>One of the conceptual developments resulting from this situation has been the increased and perhaps inevitable perception of the student as customer and education as a product. The problem is of course, it is a tenuous or even ephemeral product, and as such can be unethically justified from by equally fuzzy rationales as 'lifelong learner', or the increasingly fictional contention that a four year degree ensures an increased income. A contention which conveniently ignores the attendant issue of the almost exponential expansions of student debt and the general decline in status of the middle and working classes. For whom such degrees once did mean elevation, when they were more credible and cost less. </p>
<p>The problem of course with the concept of bachelors degrees as a product and students as consumers is that it is a panacea being sold with virtually no consumer protections. What we have systemically developed is an educational Vega, or gods help us a Pinto without warranty or possible recalls...</p>
<p>I counted up the dollar total of tuition and room & board from my four years of private college and it came to $16K (grad '75). My first job paid about $12K. I was just an average student with a business degree form a 3rd teir college, but I made back 75% of my parents investment in just the first year. The same school today charges $160k for the same four years. A new grad from the same school today would have to start at $120k to get the same ROI. None of them do. </p>
<p>Something is very, very wrong. </p>
<p>And I have some Collaterized Mortgage Securities to sell to anyone who does not understand this.</p>