After reading Complete College America‘s Time is the Enemy report, which details very low graduation rates for low-income and part-time students, Fordham Foundation’s Mike Petrilli wonders if the college-for-all push is setting students up for failure.
. . . less than half of Pell-eligible students pursuing a four-year degree graduate within six years. For part-time Pell students, it’s more like 17 percent. The numbers are similar for African-American and Hispanic students.
It’s worth trying to strengthen K-12 to cut the need for remediation, Petrilli writes. It should be easier for students to transfer credits and move quickly to a degree.
But I can’t help but wonder: with so many kids dropping out of college–and especially so many poor kids–should we reconsider our assumption that higher education is the ticket to the middle class? Isn’t it possible that lots of these kids would be better off pursuing the trades or (dare I say) the military? If you could figure out a way to do a rigorous study, I’d bet a lot of money that the military has a much better retention rate than higher education for similar young adults–and a much better track record at propelling its “graduates” into middle-class jobs.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be so sure” that education is “the ticket to a better life,” Petrilli writes.
If students actually got an education, it probably would be a ticket to somewhere, even in a job-poor economy. Going to college to flunk remedial math is not the path to success.
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