Low Graduation Rates

Of every 100 kids who enter American high schools, only about 20 obtain a bachelor's degree within a decade. That is why the proportion of adult Americans with baccalaureate degrees is rising relatively slowly, and why the U.S. has fallen behind a number of other nations in the proportion of young adults with college degrees.

There are three points of attrition that keep new high school students from becoming college graduates. Some do not make it through high school. Some high school graduates never go to college. But the largest rate of attrition is seldom discussed: 40-50 percent of those who matriculate in colleges and universities do not obtain a degree within six years of entering college. And a majority of new freshman does not get a college degree in the four years that most of them expect to acquire it.

All of this must change, and radically, if President Obama's goal of America regaining its leadership in the world in degree attainment is to be achieved. A lot of attention has gone into the second area of attrition -failure to continue on to college, but less attention has been paid at the college level to the third factor -college drop-outs.

Why do students drop out of college?

The evidence on college dropout rates is exhaustively examined in a recent American Enterprise Institute study Diplomas and Dropouts, done by some first-rate researchers (Rick Hess and Kevin Carey, among others). The study shows what veteran college professors like myself have long known, namely that students who come to college well qualified have a very high probability of graduating --the graduation rate at top Ivy League schools is well over 90 percent, while at schools with open admissions that take any high school graduate who can write a check, it is not uncommon for graduation rates to be well below 25 percent.

Two pillars of the Higher Education Establishment, William Bowen and Michael McPherson (former presidents of Princeton University and Macalester...