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I see a huge problem in public education. The college drop-out rate is currently 46%. The 54% that do graduate are taking, on average, six years. Clearly students are not prepared for college. I think this is the fault of the community at the high school level.
Students in high school are not willing to put in the effort that is required to master a subject, not all students, but most. If a student is failing, they complain to their parents that the subject is too hard, the teacher is terrible, the school smells funny, the principal is mean, etc. etc. excuses ad nauseam. Complaining is much easier than working.
So the parents complain to the school, and the principal is forced to lower the standards. I'm willing to bet high school students study less than 5 minutes per day. The student goes to college thinking that they don't have to work to pass. But when they realize that 20-40 hours of study per week is required, it's all over and thousands of dollars are wasted.
My solution would be to make high schools more rigorous as to prepare students for college. It's really that simple, the way it used to be. And if the student can't cut it, they are out and off to a vocational school.
Win-win situation. Students may actually learn something. Parents save lots of money. Colleges are again a venue for higher education, not remedial learning. Students graduate with a degree instead of just debt.
But its up the community and parents to change. No more babying your little darlings. They need to learn that work and effort are the paths to success, not whining.
One factor that the OP is likely unaware of is the reality that, due to cutbacks in state funding, many students are put in a situation where they are unable to take specific courses that they need, at a specific time. In other words, unlike years ago, not every course is offered every semester, thus causing a delay in completing their degree requirements.
Another factor that the OP may not have considered is the fact that tuition costs have risen, while financial aid packages have shrunken. As a result, some students must take a semester--or even a year or two--off from college in order to work and to save sufficient money for their tuition. This too adds to the time necessary to complete one's degree in many cases.
There are other factors with which I am familiar, as a result of serving as a HS counselor for over 3 decades, and I can guarantee that the OP is not aware of many of these realities.
Trust me, there is more involved here than just raw statistics.
I see a huge problem in public education. The college drop-out rate is currently 46%. The 54% that do graduate are taking, on average, six years. Clearly students are not prepared for college. I think this is the fault of the community at the high school level.
That's from a variety of factors. Those numbers include for-profit schools with no entry requirements and who's main purpose is taking as much money as possible instead of educating. Most of the people they accept are never going to graduate anywhere.
Students not attending full time, or who aren't there every semester, will obviously need much longer to graduate. This is often the case for various reasons, money being a major one. Either needing a semester off to make enough money to pay for the next one, or attending part-time to be able to work heavily to pay for the classes you are taking.
Various other students do things which may delay their graduation, such in-semester internships or co-op programs. I did a semester internship as a Comp Sci major, it was great. Made extremely good money, gained much more work experience and insight into the field than I did in (shorter) summer internships. There's also plenty of people who have other things come up in the span of 4 years, family issues, health issues, whatever.
Another issue is that we push everyone into college and say you'll figure out what you want to do there. So people take 2 years of courses in all different stuff before deciding, and they generally lose at least a semester because not all of those credits they took are useful for their degree.
I can continue, but the primary point is that you're taking that statistic you found and creating a narrative without thinking of other possible explanations. I am sure there are some badly educated students who could have used a better high school. I take issue with you claiming that's the primary/only cause.
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Students in high school are not willing to put in the effort that is required to master a subject, not all students, but most. If a student is failing, they complain to their parents that the subject is too hard, the teacher is terrible, the school smells funny, the principal is mean, etc. etc. excuses ad nauseam. Complaining is much easier than working.
They certainly complain. I haven't seen a great deal of evidence of the school just giving in, however. In elementary/middle school, sure. In high school, that tends to get treated with a roll of the eyes and not the school just leaping to their whim. Does whining get you something? Sure. A lot? Not really.
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So the parents complain to the school, and the principal is forced to lower the standards. I'm willing to bet high school students study less than 5 minutes per day. The student goes to college thinking that they don't have to work to pass. But when they realize that 20-40 hours of study per week is required, it's all over and thousands of dollars are wasted.
High school students spend 35 hours a week in class, and 5 hours a week on homework, on average. On average, college students are in class 15 hours a week and study 15 hours a week. You'll notice that's actually LESS hours. (although the hours are certainly more intense)
The big issue students have isn't inability to do work. It's the loss of structure, particularly with the "helicopter" parenting and overscheduling that is so prominent today.
It's not that they refuse to work, it's that they're completely not used to having a choice in their schedule and have no idea how to manage time or their own lives. Remember that when students start college, we also throw them into relative independence from previously being completely coddled in many cases.
Mom made dinner, did your laundry, told you to do your homework, and to go to bed. You had to go to school, you couldn't just go "eh, I don't feel like going today" on a regular basis, your parents + the school would come down on you. You couldn't really skip out on any of the things you were supposed to do in life. If you didn't do your homework often, you'd get a call home, or detentions/whatever, you get the idea.
There's none of that in college. And the solution to that is to start forcing them to be more independent in high school, instead of this jarring shift.
Those numbers include for-profit schools with no entry requirements and who's main purpose is taking as much money as possible instead of educating. Most of the people they accept are never going to graduate anywhere.
Absolutely correct!
That is one of the factors of which I became painfully aware, as a counselor.
Some students are just bound and determined--despite being counseled otherwise--to attend one of these dysfunctional diploma mills. Years ago, I tried my best to convince students that the $8,000 per year program at Berkeley "College" was a joke compared to the $2,000 per yr program at the local county college, but since the admissions "counselor" from Berkeley had already laid on the hard sell, my advice was almost always rejected.
Note: A counselor is someone who does not profit from your decisions. The fact that the "counselors" from this school and other for-profit schools work largely on commission, and that they will accept anyone in order to fatten their own paycheck, makes a mockery of the use of the term "counselor" for their high-pressure sales staff.
I observed that, if students stayed in that diploma mill until completion, they had problems securing employment, but more often than not, they dropped out after a short period of time, as a result of the lack of educational support available.
My attorney taught a paralegal course there for one year, and she became totally discouraged by the presence of so many totally unmotivated students, coupled with the administration's urging that she give everyone a passing grade. Needless to say, she departed from their faculty after one year, due to the sad reality of what she encountered there.
Then, we have DeVry "University". I actually had an open mind about that school until they accepted one of my self-contained special education students into their Engineering Technology program. Any school that accepts someone who has never completed even one year of algebra into an engineering program is being extremely untruthful with that student regarding his chance for success. And, as you might have guessed, this student left after less than one full semester, although that "University" got to keep the Pell Grant money that had been paid to them by the federal gov't.
So...if someone wants to just take raw statistics, the situation might look very bleak. But, if you do some in-depth analysis, and if you speak with people (such as HS counselors) who know the reality of the situation at the for-profit schools, you will understand that there is much more to this situation than there appears to be at first.
I see a huge problem in public education. The college drop-out rate is currently 46%. The 54% that do graduate are taking, on average, six years. Clearly students are not prepared for college. I think this is the fault of the community at the high school level.
You are making assumptions. Each student is different.
Sometimes kids drop out of college or take longer than four years because of:
1. Money problems
2. They change their minds about their subject of study
3. Not happy with the school, decide to eventually transfer
4. Some schools require many credits to graduate.
5. Working while attending college.
6. Immaturity (I was very shy).
All of the above applied to me. I struggled with money issues (I ended up paying for most of my education myself after my freshman year). I went to a private college for my freshman year, but dropped out mostly because of money issues. I also didn't like living in a dorm because I was so shy and hated the "drinking and partying" culture.
I spent the next two years paying back my student loans. I also wasn't sure what I wanted to major in (I was interested in so many things!) But I always knew that I would go back to college.
When I transferred to the state university I eventually graduated from, I sometimes went part-time and sometimes attended full-time, depending on my money situation. I didn't want financial aid this time around so I paid for it all myself. Fortunately I eventually found out about a monthly payment plan at my school so that made it easier!
Also, the school required a minimum 128 credits to graduate, not including any Basic Skills classes if they were required (fortunately I didn't have to take any Basic Skills classes). That adds up to averaging more than 5 classes a semester. That includes taking totally unnecessary classes in math and science.
I also worked two part-time jobs simultaneously (one on-campus, one off-campus) while I was going to school.
I loved college at my alma mater and did very well. I majored in English and minored in Journalism.
So between working, transferring schools, and generally being young and immature, I took my sweet time to graduate. But I did graduate.
They're learning less thanks to our Ed-u-ma-cashin president Dubya Bush and the NCLB "teaching to the test" BS.
A retired HS teacher warns what college professors can expect from Dubya's grand educational experiment:
You are a college professor.
I have just retired as a high school teacher.
I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.
No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002–03 academic year, which means that America’s public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade. Since the testing requirements were imposed beginning in third grade, the students arriving in your institution have been subject to the full extent of the law’s requirements. While it is true that the U.S. Department of Education is now issuing waivers on some of the provisions of the law to certain states, those states must agree to other provisions that will have as deleterious an effect on real student learning as did No Child Left Behind—we have already seen that in public schools, most notably in high schools.
Troubling Assessments
My primary course as a teacher was government, and for the last seven years that included three or four (out of six) sections of Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics. My students, mostly tenth graders, were quite bright, but already I was seeing the impact of federal education policy on their learning and skills.
In many cases, students would arrive in our high school without having had meaningful social studies instruction, because even in states that tested social studies or science, the tests did not count for “adequate yearly progress” under No Child Left Behind. With test scores serving as the primary if not the sole measure of student performance and, increasingly, teacher evaluation, anything not being tested was given short shrift.
Further, most of the tests being used consist primarily or solely of multiple-choice items, which are cheaper to develop, administer, and score than are tests that include constructed responses such as essays. Even when a state has tests that include writing, the level of writing required for such tests often does not demand that higher-level thinking be demonstrated, nor does it require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure. Thus, students arriving in our high school lacked experience and knowledge about how to do the kinds of writing that are expected at higher levels of education...
A Teacher’s Plea
As a retired public school teacher, I believe I have a responsibility to offer a caution to college professors, or perhaps to make a plea.
Please do not blame those of us in public schools for how unprepared for higher education the students arriving at your institutions are. We have very little say in what is happening to public education. Even the most distinguished and honored among us have trouble getting our voices heard in the discussion about educational policy. The National Teacher of the Year is supposed to be the representative of America’s teachers—if he or she cannot get teachers’ voices included, imagine how difficult it is for the rest of us. That is why, if you have not seen it, I strongly urge you to read 2009 National Teacher of the Year Anthony Mullen’s famous blog post, “Teachers Should Be Seen and Not Heard.” After listening to noneducators bloviate about schools and teaching without once asking for his opinion, he was finally asked what he thought. He offered the following:
"Where do I begin? I spent the last thirty minutes listening to a group of arrogant and condescending noneducators disrespect my colleagues and profession. I listened to a group of disingenuous people whose own self-interests guide their policies rather than the interests of children. I listened to a cabal of people who sit on national education committees that will have a profound impact on classroom teaching practices. And I heard nothing of value. “I’m thinking about the current health-care debate,” I said. “And I am wondering if I will be asked to sit on a national committee charged with the task of creating a core curriculum of medical procedures to be used in hospital emergency rooms.”
The strange little man turns his head and, suddenly, the fly on the wall has everyone’s attention.
“I realize that most people would think I am unqualified to sit on such a committee because I am not a doctor, I have never worked in an emergency room, and I have never treated a single patient. So what? Today I have listened to people who are not teachers, have never worked in a classroom, and have never taught a single student tell me how to teach.”
I want a school where the cost isnt on the back of the homeowners.
OK, our school funding scenario isn't the best. But how would camaro69 pay for our (overall) pretty fine schools?
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