Reuters has a good factual article on why people are not finishing college. Kind of feel like they could have gotten a little more wild style with the facts though. Pretty much every dickhead is going to college these days. So how special does that make higher education? Plus we live in a global economy and people in the States are getting educated in skills that are not in demand in the job market. Then these people with skills that are not in demand have to pay off the debt they incurred to get said useless skills.
This is my main point. Education is a choice. It’s called the internet. If people want to really learn about something, chances are they can youtube the answers. Why drop racks on racks for a piece of paper when a person can acquire that knowledge for free? So higher education can eat a bag of dicks for the most part as far as I’m concerned.
DROPOUT RATES
The “Pathways to Prosperity” study by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2011 shows that just 56 percent of college students complete four-year degrees within six years. Only 29 percent of those who start two-year degrees finish them within three years.
The Harvard study’s assertions are supported by data collected by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for its report “Education at a Glance 2010.” Among 18 countries tracked by the OECD, the United States finished last (46 percent) for the percentage of students who completed college once they started it. That puts the United States behind Japan (89 percent), and former Soviet-bloc states such as Slovakia (63 percent) and Poland (61 percent).
The failure to complete a college education in the United States is especially marked at four-year private for-profit schools, where 78 percent of attendees fail to get a diploma after six years, according to a 2011 report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
That compares with 35 percent of students in nonprofit private schools and 45 percent of students in public colleges who failed to graduate after six years.
REASONS FOR DROPPING OUT
Today’s U.S. college dropouts are more likely to be male (57 percent of college degrees go to women), the Harvard study shows. They are less likely to be pursuing careers as lawyers, doctors or architects, where higher education has a clear correlation with obtaining a job.
Reasons for dropping out included: not being prepared for the rigors of academic work; inability to cope with the competing demands of study, family and jobs; and cost, the Harvard report says.
William C. Symonds, lead author of “Pathways to Prosperity says: “You will find a lot of kids with a four-year degree who do not have a clue as to what they’ll do.”
FINANCIAL HOLE
“For many young adults, the ultimate bottom line is whether the degree or credential they earn will help them secure a job,” according to a 2011 Pew Research Center report, “Is College Worth It?”
A four-year private college education tripled in price between 1980 and 2010, the study finds, and student loan debt for a bachelor’s degree now averages more than $23,000 per student borrower.
Many students approach the dropout decision as a simple cost-benefit analysis. They ask themselves whether leaving will put them financially ahead of where they’ll be after amassing four years of student loan debt in a lukewarm job market.
DEGREE IS WRONG PATH, FOR SOME
Michael Nelson, 22, of Fayetteville, Georgia, “retired” from nearby LaGrange College during his freshman year. “I knew it wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go,” he says. Now a gold and precious metals dealer, he made $85,000 in 2011.
“A lot of my friends are coming out of school with $50,000 in debt,” Nelson says. “They don’t know how they’re going to survive because they don’t have a job.”
That doesn’t mean that college is becoming a bad investment.
In 1973, 72 percent of the workforce had no college education, but by 2007, that number dropped to 41 percent, the Harvard study shows. College graduates earn $19,550 more a year on average than those with just a high school education, according to 2010 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But in 2010, student loan debt also exceeded consumer credit card debt for the first time in history, according to estimates compiled by Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.
Financial barriers play a key role in students’ decisions to drop out of college, the Pew study finds. Among adults age 18-34 who lack a bachelor’s degree, two-thirds halted their education to support a family, 57 percent preferred to work and make money; and 48 percent simply couldn’t afford college.
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