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Roll-your-own higher ed

December 2, 2012 by

Young “heretics” with high-tech skills are Saying No to College, according to the New York Times.

Inspired by billionaire role models, and empowered by online college courses, they consider themselves a D.I.Y. vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick.

Tumblr CEO David Karp dropped out of high school and hopes to “grab 16-year-olds that are going to be brilliant and help them get there,” he tells Tech Crunch. “College isn’t making very good engineers.” Karp’s heroes are Steve Jobs and Willy Wonka.

“Here in Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honor,” said Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. He is now recruiting from the undergraduate ranks, he said, which is becoming a trend among other tech companies, too. In his view, dropouts are freethinkers, risk-takers. They have not been tainted by groupthink.

Dropouts can educate themselves without going into debt, says entrepreneur James Altucher, author of 40 Alternatives to College. “I think kids with a five-year head start on equally ambitious peers will be ahead in both education and income,” Altucher told the Times. “They could go to a library, read a book a day, take courses online. There are thousands of ways.”

Most young people are not future high-tech zillionaires, whether they earn a college degree or not. We can’t all be Willy Wonka. But it’s healthy for young people to consider alternatives to a high-debt degree. Or somewhat less debt and no degree.

Young four-year graduates are earning less, while college tuition grows and grows, reports the Fiscal Times.

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College dropouts cite costs, poor preparation

March 30, 2012 by

Only 46 percent of U.S. students who start college complete a degree, according to the OECD. That’s the lowest rate in the industrialized world. College dropouts blame high costs, poor preparation and the need to balance work and family responsibilities with classes.

 

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Costly dropouts

December 16, 2011 by

Federal, state and local taxpayers spend billions of dollars on community college dropouts, I write in U.S. News.

Fewer than 45 percent of college-ready students and just 20 percent of remedial students earn a certificate or degree in four years at Valencia College in Orlando, Fla. That’s “nearly three times the rate” of similar urban community colleges and impressive enough to earn Valencia the first Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, awarded Dec. 12 in Washington, D.C.

In short, even at one of the most successful community colleges, most students don’t complete a certificate or degree.

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Back to college? It’s not easy

December 12, 2011 by

Twenty percent of working-age adults have some college credits but no degree. persuading college dropouts to try again is a key part of the “completion agenda.” But college can be just as hard the second time around, especially if adults try to take classes designed and scheduled for 18- to 22-year-olds.

President Obama’s 2020 goal — the U.S. will be first in the world in college graduates — requires community colleges to graduate many more students. But state budget cuts will make it very difficult to increase the number of graduates, say most state community college directors. Sixteen states have de facto enrollment caps at community colleges.

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B students struggle in college

September 8, 2011 by

Illinois’ B students average a C+ at state universities and community colleges. Some graduates with similar GPAs do much better than others in their first year.

Massachusetts colleges and universities are trying to stem the high college dropout rate for graduates of Boston Public Schools.

Also on Community College Spotlight:  Fired for criticizing his college’s sexual harassment policy, an adjunct instructor has won a $50,000 settlement.

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What to do about unskilled college students

December 13, 2009 by

Many college students can’t do math or read well, write Sandra Stotsky and Ze’ev Wurman on Minding the Campus.

Estimates of those needing remedial classes before taking credit courses range from 30% of entering students to 40% of traditional undergraduates. . . .

A 2004 U.S. Department of Education study reports that 42% of freshmen in public two-year institutions need remediation.

. . . More than half of all college students will not earn a degree or credential, according to a 2009 Gates Foundation report drawing on national education statistics. For community college and low-income students, it notes, the numbers are much worse.

What to do? Teaching college skills to college-bound high school students would seem like an obvious answer.  But Stotsky and Wurman fear a push to change college coursework to be doable by the minimally skilled.

The Gates Foundation . . .  faults our post-secondary institutions for not having “responded to their students’ increasingly complex and diverse needs.” One goal of Gates’ Postsecondary Success Initiative is to make both curriculum and instruction at the post-secondary level “more effective and engaging” by integrating technology into instruction, redesigning entire courses, and “contextualizing” these courses “to match students’ field of interest.”  Details are lacking, but this seems to mean that academic degree programs would be versions of programs now offered in vocational technical high schools, the kind of schools these students should have had the opportunity—and encouragement—to enroll in.

Raising high school expectations would not increase the dropout rate, they argue.  Massachusetts, which has the toughest standards in the nation, reduced its dropout rate by 12 percent in 2008, they write.


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Why college students drop out

December 11, 2009 by

With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them from Public Agenda looks at why so many college students never earn a degree. It’s not that students are bored with their classes or reluctant to work hard, the study concludes.

Most students leave college because they are working to support themselves and going to school at the same time. At some point, the stress of work and study just becomes too difficult.

. . . Only about 1 in 10 students who have left college say a major reason they quit was that they didn’t like sitting in class or thought the classes were too difficult.

College dropouts may not realize what they’re losing by not completing a degree, the report says.

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Send fewer students to college

November 2, 2009 by

In response to Marcus Winters’ call to send more students to college, Robert VerBruggen of Phi Beta Cons argues we’re sending too many as it is.

. . . when 40 percent of college students fail to graduate in six years, and when about a quarter of employed college graduates have jobs that don’t require degrees, it’s obvious we’re pushing too many kids into higher education.

About 25 percent of college graduates in their 20s are working at jobs that don’t require degrees, VerBruggen writes.

. . . the economy doesn’t need more generic college graduates — and in fact refuses to hire many of them. Rather, it needs highly capable people in certain fields. It would probably be better to encourage students acquiring useless majors to switch to these lucrative fields than to send more kids to college across the board.

After all, when you send more kids to college, you’re scraping closer to the bottom of the college-eligibility barrel. The new kids will be less able and motivated, on average, than the ones who are already in college — and thus even more likely to drop out before finishing and to wind up in jobs that don’t utilize their degrees if they do finish.

VerBruggen agrees that better schools would prepare more inner-city students for success in college, but “it will be years before we see significant results,” even if reforms go very well. For many of today’s high school graduates, he writes, “college isn’t working.”

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