I was reading this thread and its considered shocking that some high schools have a 50% dropout rate. However a 50% dropout rate is about normal for college, and a 50% dropout rate is about normal from graduate school too. Sometimes its higher and sometimes its lower depending on the school and program (some math graduate degrees have a 80% dropout rate, but I’ve heard MD programs only have a 3% dropout rate). Plus at least with high school you can get a GED, there is no college equivalency program in case you drop out so college dropouts are at a disadvantage as they get little out of their education.
So what causes this high dropout rate? Is it lack of funds, people not realizing that college requires hard work and not wanting to put the work in, the coursework being too hard, people juggling too many responsibilities outside of school like work and family or what exactly? Why isn’t a 50% dropout rate for higher education considered a major issue? Think of all the billions wasted in both public and private funds with this dropout rate.
I think it’s because so many people are now going to college out of expectation. No longer is a trade school considered sufficient training for good jobs and thus students are being pushed into an environment where they never actually wanted to be and are burning out rapidly. If we re-evaluated and expanded the good paths available to people, I believe we would see a major decrease in the drop-out rates.
Let’s face it after all: some people just don’t learn well in a college environment. Many, like my brother, prefer more hands-on training with clear application to their daily lives. They don’t want to write papers on Kant or Keats.
several reasons:
1.) College is hard. Some just don’t want to put in the effort.
2.) Some people just go to college after high school because that’s just what everyone does (or so it might seem), then later realize that college is not for them, and drop out.
3.) Sadly, money can sometimes be a problem.
I personally think that #2 is the biggest one, but I could be wrong. Unless this figure of 50% also counts fail-outs. Does it? Cite, please.
Oh, also some people thinks that college is just drinking and partying (possibly due to believing all that they see on TV and in movies), and are disapointed.
I have no idea, but that article I listed said the graduation rate was around 41.9% in 2000, it didn’t say how many were fail outs and how many were drop outs. However I know that in many of the more advanced courses (based on the statistics i’ve read on websites that cover this issue) a rate of 20-25% of the class dropping the course combined with about 10-15% of the class getting a D or F is not unheard of. So if 100 people start the class maybe only 75 will finish it and only 64 will get a C- or higher.
As to why we worry about HS drop outs but not college:
I’d imagine the reason people are more upset about high school drop outs is a high school degree seems to be the threshold, in our society, for getting a good (living wage job).
I found this [chart](http://www.mba-business-schools.com/images/
AverageAnnualEarnings-big.gif), which at first doesn’t look like it supports my point. The largest gap appears to be between an associates degree and a bachelors. So perhaps we should worry about college drop outs.
If you look at it, though, the difference between high school and no high school seems to stradle the povery line, and the gap widens with time. So as I said, it’s unlikely you’ll get rich with just a high school degree, but you’ll be able to feed your kids. A high school degree is required to join the military, or enroll in vocational school (from what I’ve seen- I could be wrong).
I have a BA. My best friend attended two years of college, and dropped out. We make about the same. My boyfriend has a high school degree. He’s a cop and makes more than either of us (all the same age). College is not a nessecity if you’re not going into a field that demands a degree. Without a high school degree, there’s not much beyond walmart and manual labor.
I also wanted to add that many people find college irrelevant, as most schools’ academic philosophies are throwbacks from an era when college was for the wealthy. School was easy for me, and my parents were footing the bill, so I didn’t mind spending time & energy on subjects I will never use, just to be “well rounded”.
Other people (my boyfriend being one of them), perhaps who found school more of a struggle, felt that being deep in debt for a decade, and grindingly poor and exhausted for 4 years before that was not worth the prize at the end.
Many students are strongly encouraged (or even railroaded) into attending college, even if they don’t want to or it’s not appropriate for them. Some times because it’s just what children of the middle class and above are supposed to do. My mother fought a year long battle with my sister’s school because they were trying to bully my learning disabled sister into going to college. Why? Becuase they didn’t want to ruin there 100% college acceptance rate.
That chart also shows a giant gap between Bachelors (and sometimes masters) degrees vs. doctoral degrees and professional degrees. I know that at least in my school the doctoral programs have a 50% dropout rate and alot of the dropouts take a M.S./M.A. instead of the Ph.D. they were shooting for. So the income gap for those who drop out of graduate school either with no degree or a masters vs. those with a full doctorate is huge too.
That chart also shows those who do college with no degree make 10k a year more than those who never tried college. I wonder where 1 year vocational degrees fit in there. Either way I find it hard to believe that 60k is the average salary for someone with a bachelors, considering that only about 10% of the population makes over 80k a year.
Ph.D. graduate programs are actually designed to make people drop out. The programs are generally designed to prepare students for work in an academic discipline and the training is harsh. Many of the programs that I am familiar with are modeled on the “boot camp”, “pay your dues” school of thought. At that level, it is not about just doing well in classes. Most students can do that easily. It is about being able to conduct independent research that contributes to the knowledge base. It takes a certain personality type as well as drive and intellect. Many students find out that they don’t have all of it leave. That is good because, if most people did graduate with a Ph.D., the market would become even more flooded than it already is. I went to graduate school at Dartmouth in neuroscience. The graduation rate was about 33% and I contributed to that low level by dropping out myself because I figured out that was not the life I wanted to lead.
Compare that to medical schools. Students pay harsh dues at the undergraduate level but after they are accepted to an M.D. program, the school expects them to graduate and will offer help if a student falls behind. The approaches are very different.
In 2003, those workers with bachelor’s degrees earned a median of $49,900. Those with a few years of college but no degree had median earnings of $35,700, while those with a high-school diploma earned a median income of $30,800.
In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $18,900 for high school dropouts to $25,900 for high school graduates, $45,400 for college graduates and $99,300 for the holders of professional degrees (medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians and lawyers).
I had always heard average salary for college graduates was around $33k so a 60k+ figure sounded false to me, especially considering there are tons of people who get liberal arts degrees then work at Kmart.
I’d echo the sentiments of previous posters. Without a HS education aside from entrepreneurship and a few very lucky individuals you will have an extremely difficult time finding a good job and making an acceptable wage imo.
I think that college and college learning is not for everyone. In ages past the mechanic, the plumber, carpenter, welder et cetera was considered a good profession to pursue, they all pay well and if you like doing them then it works out well.
Well, they still pay very well (I know people who make at least $70,000/year and some who make more in every profession I listed) but there is a stigma attached to being a manual laborer these days. Most HS teachers and a lot of parents give out the negative and in fact incorrect vibe that working with your hands is “wrong.”
So when kids who would much better be suited for a technical job get pressured into college they don’t do well. They don’t much look forward to whatever job they may get from their degree and they do not enjoy the work they do in college.
I think trade schools should lose the almost dismissive and denigrating connotation they have, because for a huge percentage of the population they are the best available option and BETTER for the individual than a traditional college.
I have been saying the same thing for a while. There is certainly nothing wrong with learning a skilled trade. Being a master carpenter, plumber, electrician or even a welder on an oil field will probably pay much better than taking some low-level white collar job.
There is a high college droput rate because many people go by default because that is what they are told they should do. When faced by new freedom combined with more strenuous academics many simple aren’t able, prepared, or willing to make it the distance. It can end up being a huge waste of their parents or their own money. I don’t see anything wrong with a high college dropout rate. It is almost desirable IMHO. Implementing measures to retain more students would probably just mean lowering academic standards or being especially lenient on late class withdrawals etc.
I really want to know how much all of this is correlational vs. causal. For instance, I wonder how the stats break down for people with similar academic abilities that simply choose not to go to college as opposed to people with dissimilar academic abilities affecting if they go to college or not.
And I think that people that go to college just so they can get their slip of paper have something else coming. In Britain, almost free higher education has meant that people don’t value it as much, and simply having a bachelors is no longer a selection criteria. Consequently, companies have found other ways to sort people and begun ignoring degree status, offering high paying jobs to people with only a high school education.
Good; frankly we waste way too much time in this country with not-so-smart people pursuing worthless degrees that don’t teach them anything and making the market harder for people that are truly on top in these fields.
It might be Dartmouth. My wife was in the biology PhD program there (a long time ago) and felt that Dartmouth made grad students third class citizens. She left with a MS, having passed all her tests, because she decided she didn’t like lab work that much. I was in Illinois in Computer Science, and loved it.
I wonder what the qual fail rate is, and if they are counted. I believe a lot of liberal arts grad students become ABDs (all but dissertation) and take forever, since they don’t have assistantships, and don’t need labs to do research in.
I was in two grad programs (I moved because my advisor died on me) and neither was a boot camp, at least not for me. But I loved doing research. I loved having a couple of years to work on a topic I really cared about. I knew many PhD students (and still do today) who are happy to be assigned thesis topics, then do it, then produce the necessary results and paper, and get graduated. I’m not necessarily against screening out people who are not into research, but I guess the slave labor pool would dry up then. (I’m in industry, so I have no horse in that race.)
I wonder how two year degrees factor into the general topic. In California it is common to send kids to a two year college to later transfer to a four year college. I wonder if it gets counted as dropping out if they don’t. The link says 4 year schools only, but someone who leaves a 4 year school and then gets an Associates degree is different from someone who doesn’t get anything.
It’s not wasted, unless the drop-out never attended classes. One can get a valuable experience simply taking classes. A diploma is just proof that they’ve fulfilled all the requirements.
When I was looking for employment, I noticed that a lot of employers required a set number of years of higher education, not a diploma. So having a year of graduate school in biology was good enough to become, say, a mid-level lab technician. I found this refreshing because it means the drop-out’s education hasn’t been a waste. It can count for something.
I agree. Getting funding to do research, especially overseas, can sometimes be difficult, and actually doing the research can be something else entirely. As a recent graduate student, I found it very easy to let weeks go by before I got back to work researching and writing my dissertation, especially without the annoying but often necessary prodding of my advisor or other people in my program. I ended up taking about four years to complete my dissertation, defend it, and graduate, and that was a more-or-less expected length of time. There are plenty of folks in my program who were ABD when I got to grad school in 1997, and are still there now. In high school, students tend to be more overtly supervised by administrators and teachers, and it can be difficult to make the adjustment to a more independent style of scholarship.
In addition, I think that because there’s an older student body in graduate school, many people find that “real life” competes with their time. People with families or those starting families tended, in my experience, to either drop out of the program completely or extend their time frame by several years. Those who managed to speed up their writing and defense were rare.
