Dropout Grants

Campus Report ^ | March 10, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

[bs9021]

Dropout Grants

by: Bethany Stotts, March 10, 2009

With President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2010 moving forward, academics are lining up to suggest areas in higher education which could get more funding.

“That’s why...we will provide the support necessary for all young Americans to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” said President Barack Obama on February 23, when addressing Congress.

California’s State University system Chancellor, Charles B. Reed, has his own suggestion on how to boost graduation rates.

“Now, I’d like to see the Obama Administration take a look at funding institutions for the first time in higher education, sort of like Title I where you look at the economics of the student profiles that you serve, and this would be mostly Title I type students who go on to college—they become our Pell students—and see if they can reward and incentivize institutions to serve these students successfully,” Reed told the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Senior Editor Sara Hebel this March.

When asked by Hebel how much this would cost, Reed answered “A lot of money,” and that last year “We estimated that it would cost 12 to 14 billion dollars.”

This, he argues, would help universities and colleges serving low-income and minority students to offer “remedial education,” student support services, and “help these students all the way along to retain them in college and to graduate them.”

The key to Reed’s proposal is to “provide institutional aid to higher education for the first time.” In other words, Reed would like financial-aid dollars to be delinked from these students and provided directly to schools...

[Emile]

Another industry asking for a bailout. Anyone surprised that they’re all lining up?

[Major Matt Mason]

This, he argues, would help universities and colleges serving low-income and minority students to offer “remedial education,” student support services, and “help these students all the way along to retain them in college and to graduate them.”

Um, don't we take care of "remedial education" in grade school and high school? Aren't we already spending billions (and probably trillions) to educate these idiots? But what's a few billion more when you can just print the money. Welcome to Obamanomics.

[wastedyears]

I’m not a dropout, therefore I don’t qualify.

Nor do I have interest in going to college in the current political climate.

Next

[The_Reader_David]

Oh, goody. We already have too many people in our colleges and have lowered standards so much that it’s hard to flunk out as many as should be flunked out.

It’s bad enough with university administrations taking the attitude that students are customers and customers must be made happy. Taking student evaluations of teaching too seriously without controlling for the fact that students will always blame the instructor for their own failings completely eroded all academic standards (except for the admissions standards of ‘elite’ schools). Now the Obamaites will expect us to educate everyone?

The only result with be Bachelors degrees will become as debased as high school diplomas, and within a generation one will need a Master degree to get any serious job.

[anoldafvet]

Of course when he gets done there won’t be any JOBS for them, but what the hell, it’s his intentions that count. We’ll have the highest educated janitorial force in the world.

[GeronL]

right. they’ll just stick it in their endowmwnt funds and raise tuition prices

[reaganaut1]

Intelligence, like other human traits, is partly hereditary. The children of doctors, lawyers, and engineers will on average be more intelligent than those of lower-income workers, so a higher fraction of the former have the brains to graduate from college.

An even more politically incorrect assertion is that the races are not equally intelligent on average, and that a higher fraction of youngsters being black and Hispanic (which is already happening) dooms the goal of having higher college graduation rates.

[alexander_busek]

This, he argues, would help universities and colleges serving low-income and minority students to offer “remedial education,” student support services, and “help these students all the way along to retain them in college and to graduate them.”

Why stop there? Why not also offer remedial post-graduate studies? Remedial medical school and remedial medical internships? Remedial professorships? Shouldn't we be doing more to help "slower" students become heart surgeons, rocket scientists, and architects?

Regards,