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

I agree with much of what's being said here, though I question how much of it's changed. I have a bunch of somewhat unrelated points:

— Were high schools ever very difficult? I agree it's certainly not now, but I question whether it was ever that tough.

— In the same vein, haven't kids always been stupid? Haven't they always (in somewhat modern times) drank too much and not studied hard enough? FWIW, I'm 29. I always balk a little at the idea that kids today are more this or more that, lazier or less focused or whatever, and that they've been ruined by TV or video games or Facebook or whatever the newest threat to society is.

— I think the "everyone must go to college" drumbeat is definitely a factor. I occasionally get roped into covering graduation, and the events at two small, rural high schools we cover always shock me a little bit. They always announce the grads after-school plans, and maybe half of the graduating class plans to immediately enter the world force, most to go work at the local coal mine. At my high school, virtually everyone went to college, or at least pretended to. I remember one girl in our class of about 100 was pretty up front about not going, and I just thought that was the craziest thing. She wasn't dumb, always had good, even great grades. I was just sure she was throwing her life away. In truth, there should have been many more people in my class that followed her lead. In the end, things worked out for her just fine. But, I've not yet totally absorbed that lesson. When I hear so many kids set out from high school to work in a coal mine, I can't help but be sad.

— I certainly never was aware of people "working the system to get a degree," at least not in any remotely serious field. I was in a fraternity, and in my experience, the idea of "sending pledges to go to class for them" is a wild myth. I didn't goof around too much with cheating. We used to memorize the tests and their answers for one class with a professor who used 100 questions from her 400 question database for each test. The database hadn't been updated for at least a decade. But, that's not exactly cheating. I may have copied an assignment here or there, but I certainly was never aware of any large scale cheating. I definitely never saw it, and I definitely never took part in it.

— Cost is obviously a problem. Colleges now seem to be suck in a maddening arms race. I imagine the last 10-15 years have been fairly grueling for administrators. When I was in school, the vast, vast, vast majority of available dorms were still of the old tiny cinder block room variety. A few years after I left, they gutted my nine-story hall and turned them all in to two-bedroom, one bath suites. A lot of other schools were already a few steps ahead in that process, and kids looking for a place to go were expecting suites, not crappy looking (but awesome, character building) cinder block cells. I guess it's the same way for a lot of areas for these big schools. I can see a vicious cycle breaking out. An influx of students means you need more facilities and staff. More facilities and staff means you need more students, to help pay the tab. To get more students, you need better facilities. And on and on.

— I've heard very compelling arguments about an "education bubble" in this country, and how it could burst the way housing did. It's been too long for me to be able to relay it intelligently, but with the insane rises in the cost of an education and the massive loss of value of a degree, the basics seem to add up.

 

I'm not sure there's an education bubble, per se. The New York Fed released a report a few weeks ago that said roughly a quarter of those with student loans were delinquent, but it counted those in school who hadn't begun repaying them yet (and why would you?). A lot of those delinquencies have been caused by the recession and its after-effects, with the just-out-of-college generation struggling to get started in a limping and more competitive job market. So many of them haven't been able to repay their loans at the rate that would keep them current, but they aren't far enough behind to risk total default.

I think the major problem with education, more than a "bubble" that's about to burst, is that the recession will be a setback for the generation that just got out of college for the rest of their lives. Not having a job right out of college, or being underemployed even, severely dampens future earnings, and combine that with the fact that unlike previous generations, many of them (us, probably, given that I'm 25) are saddled with massive student loan debt that will take money out of their pockets that could be used for mortgages, cars, and other reusable goods.

There's considerable economic debate about the education bubble, and student loan costs are out of control. And there very well could be a bubble in the future -- big banks, which up until the passage of the Affordable Care Act were major players in even the federal student loan process, have securitized student loans the same way they did mortgages, and mass defaults would cause a lot of pain -- but at least right now, the ill effects of ballooning student loans are that they're going to hamper a lot of younger people who are already hampered by the natural effects of entering the workforce right as the economy collapsed.

 

AMEN!!!