'Why do so many Americans drop out of college?'

Your daughter & the students on the AP track are the ones who are being prepared very well for college, and they'll be the ones who succeed in college and beyond. Many of those taking AP/dual credit courses are insanely competitive, they're always looking to protect their GPA at all costs, because they all want to be giving the speech at graduation. They pull each other up, too, and work together really, really well. But, in our school (which is a HIGH-achieving public school), that probably amounts to, at most, one-fourth of the student body. And ... go back to the stats. 28% of Americans have a college diploma.

I was talking about the mid-level kids who wouldn't take an AP course if their lives depended on it, and skate through on regular courses. Of that group, a very small number graduates from college.

 

Not the case everywhere. The ed school fad (they recycle themselves every few years) now is "mainstreaming," so we put special ed kids and valedictorians in the same regular classes. It's rare to find honors/regular/remedial tracks like we had when I was in school.

Again, small sample size, but at our school, the only "tracked" courses are English, where there are three levels (honors, advanced, regular) + AP for juniors and seniors. That's more than a lot of schools I see in our area. Social studies offers AP (in one subject, U.S. History) and regular. Science & math aren't tracked at all (other than AP classes), but beyond the required freshman biology, you rarely see college-bound kids in the earth science or physical science classes ... and nothing but college-bound kids in chemistry, physics and anatomy.

 

I would never advise any kid to quit college. I've never regretted for a second my decision to do so.

 

I graduated from high school in '96 and it was drummed into us that we HAD to go to college. It was either a four-year degree or collect a welfare check. When I did get to college there were a lot more people interested in boozing it up than studying and for a year I was one of them until I realized flunking out would be very easy.
I think that's a big reason for drop-outs. They go, drink for a while, realize they're really there to drink, not study and could just as easily drop out, drink with their friends back home, work some minimum wage job and save 20k a year

 

When I was in high school, college seemed like it would be fun: lots of parties, interesting intellectual pursuits, liberated coeds, etc.

But, when I got there, it became obvious that, if actually doing fairly well academically was the goal, it was boring and difficult.

Then, I switched my major to journalism and, while it was still boring at times, at least it was no longer difficult.

The downside was that I was being overly-prepared in the theories of a career for which I would learn most of the real skills for on the job.

As an added bonus, that was also a career that was soon going to be devalued and slashed to the bone.

So, in retrospect, I probably might have been better off as a plumber. Well except for my tendency to totally screw up any plumbing device I attempt to repair and my dreaded shyness for showing any sort of butt cleavage.

 

Nobody I knew screwed up badly freshman year.

Sophomore slump? Check.

 

Working at community college, what I see as the biggest problem today with students not succeeding is that students are simply not prepared for college courses. Even those taught at a community college.

 

My daughter screwed up the sophomore year but her freshman roommate screwed up the freshman year. Both, however, graduated right on time after four years.

 

To those of you bemoaning students leaving the dorms to live in apartments, what schools are you looking at? I went to a big state school, and unless you were a foreign student, in the band, or an athlete, there wasn't really an option to stay in the dorms past freshman year. You could apply to do it, but they didn't even have enough dorms for the incoming freshmen, and they were given priority in most cases.

A lot of kids who shouldn't be in college are there, for sure. But the cost is a major factor here. The cost of the average public school has ballooned, and so has the cost of community and technical colleges. It's not the only factor, but it's certainly one of them.

 

Outing alert: Liesl is Annie Savoy.

 

If I could do it over again, part of me wants to skip college and probably learn how to weld, operate heavy machinery and electrical work. However, I'd try and do it part time or online - college that is.

 

My grandfather paid less than $100 per year to go to college in the early '50s. It's $28,000 now.

If cost isn't a big reason why kids are dropping out, than I'm missing something.