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)
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.
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
You can learn most things in a month or less for cubicle life.
Engineering and medical take longer of course.