More kids in college, but most don’t graduate
Jan 17, 2014, 11:26 AM | Updated: 1:19 pm
President Obama proposes to fight poverty and inequality with a new government program to send more students to college. But what use is getting kids to start college if most them won’t graduate?
Figures show 66 percent of all high school graduates already going directly to college, but less than 40 percent of those kids manage to get a degree within four years. Promoting a few years of collegiate frustration, with crushing debt and without graduating, is hardly a solution to poverty, or a means of assistance for struggling young people.
More appropriate would be a new emphasis on finishing high school—because the one-out-of-five who don’t get high school diplomas are the ones who are truly crippled in today’s economy. Many Americans could benefit more from vocational school and work experience, than from politically correct courses in “Gender Studies” or “Third World Poetry.”