Posted on 12/02/2014 7:22:24 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The vast majority of students at American public colleges do not graduate on time, according to a new report from Complete College America, a nonprofit group based in Indianapolis.
“Students and parents know that time is money,” said the report, called “Four-Year Myth.” “The reality is that our system of higher education costs too much, takes too long and graduates too few.”
At most public universities, only 19 percent of full-time students earn a bachelor’s degree in four years, the report found. Even at state flagship universities — selective, research-intensive institutions — only 36 percent of full-time students complete their bachelor’s degree on time.
Nationwide, only 50 of more than 580 public four-year institutions graduate a majority of their full-time students on time. Some of the causes of slow student progress, the report said, are inability to register for required courses, credits lost in transfer and remediation sequences that do not work. The report also said some students take too few credits per semester to finish on time. The problem is even worse at community colleges, where 5 percent of full-time students earned an associate degree within two years, and 15.9 percent earned a one- to two-year certificate on time.
The lengthy time to graduate has become so much the status quo that education policy experts now routinely use benchmarks of six years to earn a bachelor’s degree and three years for an associate degree.
“Using these metrics may improve the numbers, but it is costing students and their parents billions of extra dollars...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Our publik skools don’t prepare kids for college, so even in today’s dumbed-down colleges they spend their freshman year doing remedial high school work.
I think the parent paying the tuition is part of the problem. It’s bad that parents are expected to pay their kid’s way through school and it’s wrong that parents are somehow suckered into paying for asinine fluff degrees.
My kids, if I have them, will pay their own way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.