I am a couple of days late on this, but Kevin Drum’s site has a post up with the Washington Monthly’s take on the latest federal report on higher education.
When you look at the system as a whole, the numbers are disturbing — only 37% of students who begin at four-year colleges nationwide actually graduate in four years.
Now while I teach at a two-year college, I do not really find that number disturbing at all. To get a four year degree in four years requires that you be a full-time student the entire four years. College students are adults, and they are not compelled to be ful-time students. Some work part-time to help pay for college, and as a result may take a reduced course load. Some co-op, so that they have a better chance of landing a job after graduation. That means … longer than four years to get a degree.
While you may blame the colleges to some extent for this, there’s not a whole lot they can do about it, except to perhaps require less credit hours for graduation. (Some schools are doing exactly this – I got a newsletter from Clemson‘s chemistry department the other day detailing how the curriculum was to be “streamlined” to reduce the number of credit hours required for a degree.
Extending the timeframe to six years only brings the rate up to 63%. For black and Latino students, it’s less than 50%.
While I agree that the percentage of minority students that don’t graduate is disturbing simply because it’s lower than the rest, you can clearly see that a lot of folks are extending their stay at college.
We have a similar issue at the two-year schools. Many of our students do not graduate with a two-year degree in two years. Of course, the vast majority of these students have jobs (many have full-time jobs), and cannot take full-time loads. Those that try to juggle full-time work and full-time student status are sometimes forced to let their studies slide. Is it useful to criticize the school in this situation? What can the school do about it?
Criticizing the way financial aid is given might be a useful place to look, though. Many students tell me they “have to be full time” for financial aid reasons.