Success in College: what might influence it?

updated 091118

Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore. -- Gaudeamus Igitur, C. W. Kindeleben 1781

A lot of effort and money has recently been poured into bringing high school students up to some kind of par, “reducing the achievement gap,” as it is called. The point of this undertaking is to get kids into college. But what happens once they’re there? Except at the schools with the highest acceptance standards, the drop-out rate is astounding. What’s to be done about it?

Perhaps the more sensible question might be “Why should we expect anything else, when we consider the non-academic factors that influence college success?"

A 2007 publication by ACT, The Role of Nonacademic Factors in College Readiness and Success* lists three important kinds of non-academic factors:

1. Individual psychosocial factors, such as academic self-discipline, or commitment to school, and self-regulation, for example, emotional control, and academic self-confidence.

2. Family factors, such as attitude toward education, involvement in students’ school activities, and geographic stability

3. Career planning that identifies a good fit between students’ interests and their postsecondary work

Let’s get real here! Only the third item, career planning identifying a “good fit” – if such planning existed and were financially feasible for schools to utilize -- is something schooling could address with any hope of effectiveness.

Shooting at closing the high school achievement gap seems to be really off-target aiming, if eventually producing college graduates is the goal.

To examine these issues further, see The First-Year College Experience: Strategies for Improvement


Cordially
--- EGR

* available at http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/nonacademic_factors.pdf

High School Diploma or Doomed to Poverty? Is that the only choice?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. -- Robert Frost

In 2008 Lansing, Michigan school officials instituted new, tougher graduation standards and predicted that would increase the number of kids dropping out of school.

Rebecca Rocho, an assistant superintendent with the Calhoun County Intermediate School District, no doubt hired for her clairvoyance into the even more distant future opined, “By having them leave high school without a diploma you doom them to a life of poverty, and doom their children to a life of poverty."

In education, nonsense begets even more nonsense. On the one hand, clearly, you don’t make students who are failing less likely to fail by raising graduation requirements. On the other hand, dropping out of high school is not like dropping off a high cliff.

Fact: many top rate colleges do not require a high school diploma. If the student "shows promise" ($$$?), they may be accepted.

Fact: There is no consistent way used to determine the number of dropouts in any given year. Students drop out, come back, switch schools, get GED's etc.

Fact: There are many opportunities for people to pursue further education when and if they want it; for example, through community colleges or on the job training.

For more on this see Identifying the "At Risk" Student: What is the Concern? -- EGR

College Graduation? No Guaranteed Ticket to “Success”

If you’re going to college just to party, you’re wasting your money – or your parents’ money – but perhaps you’ll end up with some fond memories from it.

If you’re going to college to find a job to make yourself wealthy, you should aim to graduate other than into an economic recession. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, graduating into a down-turning economy badly affects a job-seeker's income for years. ( See WSJ, May 9, 2008, The Curse of the Class of 2009: For College Grads Lucky Enough to Get Work This Year, Low Wages are Likely to Haunt Them for a Decade or More)

That article goes on to state

…for each percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate, those with the misfortune to graduate during the recession earned 7% to 8% less in their first year out than comparable workers who graduated in better times. The effect persisted over many years, with recession-era grads earning 4% to 5% less by their 12th year out of college, and 2% less by their 18th year out.

So, in 2011 with a 9% unemployment rate, you should, roughly calculating, expect a minimum of 10.5 to 12% less in your first year of employment, than you would have in, say, a year with an unemployment rate of 7.5%.

You might as well party your way through college, it seems. Or do something better: learn what really interests you. (A little partying won’t hurt, either. Neither would picking up saleable experience or a skill during summer vacation.) But take advantage of college to study something you really enjoy, something that lights up your life. Just don’t expect to earn your living at it. It may happen; it may not.

A common strategy among graduates is to stay on in school and get a higher degree. This costs more money, usually borrowed, and offers no more guaranteed a result than the undergraduate degree.

You, I and a lot of other people, have been brought up on unrealistic expectations: school success does not have the influence we imagined on our chances for job success. An A, B, C or D in calculus, or English, or chemistry, whether we get it in high school or college, is likely all the same to a future employer, whose future needs will be far more important to the decision to hire us than any of our past academic pains and glories.

To examine these issues further, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry. 
How much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?


Cordially
--- EGR