<p>My understanding is that the authors had pretty darn good statistics – comprehensive longitudinal records on cohorts of students from the same high schools in five different states. I haven’t read the book, but I would be stunned beyond belief if the authors somehow forgot to take economic issues into account. Their conclusion was that students in a similar economic position were more likely to get sidetracked by all sorts of issues, including the economics, the more they tried to take the easier, often cheaper route. It wasn’t binary, of course – everyone who went to the “best” four year college didn’t succeed, and everyone who opted for community college didn’t fail. However bad the directional-state-u graduation rates were, though, the community college path worked significantly less well.</p>