Posted on 12/06/2019 6:23:54 AM PST by karpov
About 40 percent of Americans who enroll in college drop out before earning a certificate or degree. A high percentage of those who drop out are from poor families; they attended K-12 schools where academic standards were low and students who really tried to learn faced peer rejection for “acting white.” Still, some graduate and get into college. Then what?
In The College Dropout Scandal, author David Kirp, an emeritus professor of public policy in the University of California-Berkeley’s Goldman School, argues that what happens to those students should be regarded as a national scandal because the colleges that enrolled them often fail to get them “across the finish line” to their diplomas.
And because the dropouts are disproportionately poor and minority, our higher education system is increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Kirp, therefore, believes that our higher education system is not only letting down students but also letting down the entire country.
Professor Kirp, it must be noted, is a political activist who looks at education policy through “progressive” lenses. He served on President Obama’s transition team and helped draft the administration’s initiatives. In his first address to Congress in 2009, Obama set forth a goal of raising America’s “output” of college graduates so that we’d lead the world in this statistic. Kirp and the former president both regard college completion as essential to individual success.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
That’s the problem that leaves them wholly unprepared for higher education in the first place: passing them along to the next grade year after year after year based upon age, not a demonstration that anything at all had been learned.
I was on the admissions committee of a university that all would recognize. Our charge was to decide on the admission of students “at the margin”. This was during the era of “quotas for minority students”, even though that was almost never talked about openly. We routinely passed over white students in favor of minorities who, at least I felt, would never make it to graduation. When I objected that we’d just be taking their money for a few semesters, I was shouted down with “you have to give them a chance!” They didn’t have a chance unless our grading standard fell off a cliff. Of those I tracked, not one made it to graduation. In my mind, quotas did more harm than good.
Guess we’ll have to let White students take the college exams for “students of color,” just to make it fair. But there is an exception to this story of victimhood. Ever notice the poor Asian students manage to get to the top of practically every graduating class in both high school and college?
I really don’t think that 40% dropout rate is all that unchanged over the past 5 decades at least. Back before there were participation awards and everyone wins, there was a culling of the herd. You worked hard and made the grade, or you didn’t. And people dropped out or were just cut. The expenses and loans you had, well, that too is a learning opportunity for your future endeavors.
“The world needs ditch-diggers, too!”
—Dean Wormer (Animal House)
And it pays waaaaaaaaaay better than a degree in woymn's studies and the like, in most cases. Ever hire a guy with a backhoe to replace a broken sewer trap?
40% drop out rate. That’s quite good in my opinion.
I believe that many of the “dropouts” awaken to the fact that higher “education” isn’t about education, but rather, Marxist indoctrination.
They realize that they are not getting any life skills and realize that their future requires serious trade skills and life preparation.
That was Judge Smails in Caddyshack.
So it is the role of higher education to teach them high school all over to ensure they can get through college?
Tucker Carlson has had some great discussions about this, combined with the explosion of college loan debt.
Some of the problems include:
1) As government has increased the ability for students to go into debt for an “education,” colleges have increased the costs of that education at a pace that far outstrips any reasonable reason for the costs to increase.
2) The government has taken over the student loans, and we all know how good the government is at making prudent financial decisions. “Drunken sailors” are far more responsible at that task.
3) No “responsible adult” actually performs a risk/reward analysis as to whether going to college is a good idea for the student, and even worse, when minority students are sent to colleges for which they are not academically prepared, rather than a less prestigious school, almost guarantees that the student will fail and drop out. We see this primarily with minority students, and Dr. Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this. Another question which often isn’t asked is “Should this student go to college?” Not everyone is cut out to go to college. Mike Rowe has written extensively on this topic.
4) Since we have an irresponsible 3rd party making the loans, and the loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, the government has created and contributed to the problem, and now we’re seeing dem presidential candidates declaring that the government will “solve” the “crisis” that the government created and contributed to in the first place, by forgiving the loans.
5) But what is worst is that these colleges, many with HUGE endowments, as Tucker correctly pointed out, have no “skin in the game.” Colleges have no (financial) incentive to make certain that the students who have indebted themselves to the point that a lifetime of work that the education prepares them for will not generate enough money to pay back the loans they’ve taken out. As soon as the college cashes the check, the college actually has incentive for the student to fail and drop-out, which will open up a space for a new student ready to pay with unlimited government loans.
Mark
During my first semester in the computer science program at SUNY @ Stony Brook in 1988, the CS-101 Introduction to Computer Science class was a "culling" class. We didn't actually touch a computer until the last few weeks of the course (and it was an old VAX 750!)
The class was held in one of the largest lecture halls on campus, and there were several hundred students. Fewer than 100 of us successfully completed the class.
Mark
Oops! I stand corrected! Fun movie, old fave...
100% dropout rate...really, if you look at their preparedness for survival on their own.
Yeah..had organic chem like that...300 to start...100 to finish. Chem majors dropping out...changing majors..etc. Could be bad teachers but culling is a technique which is good for students...teaches em what they do not really want to know.
“I really don’t think that 40% dropout rate is all that unchanged over the past 5 decades at least. Back before there were participation awards and everyone wins, there was a culling of the herd. You worked hard and made the grade, or you didn’t. And people dropped out or were just cut. The expenses and loans you had, well, that too is a learning opportunity for your future endeavors.”
I started college in the mid 1960’s. I remember the welcome freshman program.
One of the deans told us to stand up and look at the person on the left and the person on the right.
Then, he said in a little over a year, two of the 3 would drop out of college. That was true re my high school fellow graduates. About 30 of the grads went to college. About 2 out of 3 had dropped out before the second year ended.
Two of my adult good friends are military academy grads, one is a West pointer and the other a Naval Academy grad. They went through the same exercise and actually about 3 out of 4 plebes dropped out.
Our oldest son, 50+, an engineer graduate was told the same. He said that maybe 1 out of 4 were graduated from his freshman class.
His son, decades later at the same university was told that 50 % of his class would drop out. He is seeing the dropout rate happening in his first semester. Some class mates dropped out after Thanksgiving, and more will be baling out before or after Christmas.
A grand daughter is enrolled in a 4 year STEM program back east. She is in her third year, and 40% of those who started with her have dropped out. Her classmates like her were in the top 5% of their class from good high schools.
So this is not ‘new’ news. Not everyone should go to college, and not everyone who goes to college will be graduated.
Affirmative Action has worked against many minorities. Other than the truly brilliant and dedicated like Dr. Ban Carson, many minorities get into colleges and universities one level above their academic ability to prevail. Thus many of them do not survive to graduation. If they had just gone to a school where they would be able to do the work, they could have succeeded.
Forget it, he’s rollin’
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