Today’s edition of Inside Higher Education included an article about matriculation of students into, and degree completion from, US institutions within the next decade. These figures appear to be linked to our country’s changing demographics, so some of the projections are to be expected. For instance, the rate of increase of college enrollment for Latino and Hispanic students outpaces that of any other ethnic group (46% compared to the nearest “competitors” which are African American students whose growth rate is expected to be 25%) whereas the rate of increase of White students is expected to hover around 1%. One reason to be leery about such data is that the article does not clearly state the current enrollment of the groups (in numbers), so it could be that the rapid increases of certain groups are partially because their current representation is relatively low. Another key issue is the actual retention of students to graduation.
Last year, President Obama stated a goal of increasing the college graduation rate by 50%, from the current level of 40.4% to 60% by the year 2020. If we are to believe his rhetoric from August 2010, Mr. Obama believes that America is “failing” college students and seems embarrassed that our country’s worldwide ranking for graduating students with at least an associate degree has dropped from first place to 12th place within one generation. Looking at the rankings, we are behind some countries that seem obvious such as Australia and New Zealand, both of which have nearly 5 additional expected years of education according to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2010 Human Development Index (HDI) Trends from 1980-2010 (see the excel document available from http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/) . However, some of the higher ranked countries seem less obvious.
For example, Korea’s college graduation rate outpaces the United States’ rate by 15% (55.5% vs. 40.4% as of August 2010) although that country’s current expected years of education is only slightly higher than ours (16.82 vs. 15.75 years). Looking further into data available online, there are two striking differences between the higher educational systems of the United States and that of the Republic of Korea. First, during the past 30 years, Korea has increased its expected years of education by 45% (from 11.57 to 16.82 years) whereas that same figure has risen only 11% within the United States (from 14.21 to 15.75 years). Second, according to an article published in October 2006 in Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning by Sunwoong Kim and Ju-Ho Lee, “the Korean higher education system had to rely heavily on the private sector” (p. 558). In fact, at the time that these authors originally wrote their article, approximately 95% of college students enrolled in Korean institutions of higher education were in private institutions. Loosening of government regulation (which I would characterize as micromanagement at its finest) in 1995 allowed for the development of a range of institutions that matched the range of academic preparation for Korean students. In other words, as seems to be the growing situation here in the US, if a student wants to attend college, there is an institution with appropriately rigor and reputation (or lack thereof). Now, 15 years later, Korea's college graduation rate has put the US to shame.
I believe that this topic warrants further investigation regarding what is being done in countries with high graduation rates (such as Canada and the Russian Federation) and what level of academic rigor has led to such high numbers of graduates in certain countries. Based on my experience with individuals who have earned graduate degrees (in engineering) from universities in Russia, I question whether or not their graduation rate is a true metric of success or simply an outcome of an ingrained system that passes people along irrelevant of performance. From a national perspective, it seems appropriate to attempt to emulate systems that appear successful, but only as long as the success is genuine.
We just talked about this last night in our finance class. Based on that information, we are one of the few nations where the older generation and the current generation have the same level of education. In most others, Korea, Japan, and Canada, for example, the generation in college is achieving higher levels of degrees than the older generation. Figures like these bring me back to the Mature article (Arthur Levine) that we had to read for last weekend. Are we seeing the effects of a mature industry?
ReplyDeleteI asked this last night of David Longernaker (http://www.wiche.edu/about/president), who is the President of WICHE. His response was "no." He feels that in past trends economic downfalls have pushed higher education to reinvent themselves and emerge from the recession a new and different "product."
But in this class we have talked about the history of higher education has shown limited major changes in the last 375 year. So I agree with Robyn with the idea that further investigation needs to happen for higher education in the United States. What do you think?
We talk about education being important in the States, but fail to recognize teachers and other education professionals as they are recognized in other countries. Teachers are valued differently in the States. They are not thought of as doctors or lawyers. I have seen first hand how teaching has become more of a disciplinary role than that of an educator. We are slowly moving from the “no child left behind” movement to I hope something more realistic and attainable. Not sure if anyone saw “Waiting for Superman” in which lemon teachers are portrayed. Unfortunately we have all experienced having a “lemon” in our educational journey. When elementary teachers are working with students who are coming to class hungry, tired, and unable to focus-we are dealing with a very different type of student than what we think was going to walk into the classroom. Hello Maslow!
ReplyDeleteThe States are on a different track towards education versus Europe. Here students wait until their 2nd or even 3rd year of college to start focusing on a major/degree. In parts of Europe you are already gearing up in high school to know if you will even be going to college or not. It is competitive and a privilege to go to college.
Don’t get me started on geography and how many Americans own a passport (January 2011, State Department stated only 37% of the nation owned a passport)……… Can we compete with other countries if we do not even know where they are located? The “ugly American” syndrome needs to be revamped and we need to start being global ambassadors, learning languages (beyond English), and getting out in the world or we will never be able to compete with our foreign competitors.
I think this is a difficult question to address. The question being what are other countries doing better. It is hard to say. As we know data can be skewed either way so I find it hard to really judge success on numbers. I do think that our teachers are often overlooked and reform is needed in the K-12 system.
ReplyDeleteThere are lemons (as Katee mentioned) in our education system and we do need a better way of measuring our K-12 schools but I also think we need to take a look at higher education and how we move students along (as you mentioned Robyn) or do not. I have had interesting experiences of repeatedly hearing instructors/faculty speak of weeding students out vs giving them opportunities to improve. Not that this is the case of all instructors/faculty but, are other countries just doing a better job of giving all their students an opportunity to succeed? Or investing in their actual development vs lecturing them in and out of the classroom? Another question to consider is when was it decided that graduation rates equaled an educated society?
As we learned in one of Matt’s classes over the summer, one of the desired goals of enrollment management is to identify an optimal mix of students that is financially sustainable. If this is accomplished effectively it will certainly increase graduation rates. However, this procedure will inevitably leave out many segments of the student population that are more costly to recruit and retain.
ReplyDeleteBalancing quality, diversity, retention and graduation rates are major challenges of any higher education institution. I agree that financial responsibility should be assumed in the management of a higher education institution but also we should consider that the environment at the institution has an impact on the student.
Therefore, the role of faculty, staff and administrators as leaders and mentors is critical to increasing graduation rates.
Figures noted by Robyn provide evidence that in other countries graduation rates have increased considerably. However, in some cases such as Korea, this success has been attributed to the private sector. Perhaps, this means that higher education institutions in Korea have developed partnerships with corporations to support their mission. Is this the avenue we want to pursue in the U.S?
I agree, this matter should be researched further to identify effective ways of increasing graduation rates.
Graduation rates seem to be a hot topic these days. I know we talk about them daily where I work and I am constantly trying to push my staff into thinking of new ways we, as Enrollment Services, can help increase our graduation rates. So far we have increased our communication to potential graduates and have decided would like some campaigns to help get the word out to students.
ReplyDeleteWorking at a community college and measuring graduation rates is difficult. Students transfer without ever "earning" a degree. Students also come to community colleges just for personal interest, but declare a degree so they can receive financial aid. There are many challenges with how we currently measure graduation rates, which I think needs to be addressed.
When working with international students and looking at their transcripts, I am amazed at the grades that are considered as "passing" in order for them to attain a degree. I recently worked with one student who earned a BS and received a 50% in almost every course. So, are other countries measuring success and graduation rates the same way the United States does?
I do think institutions of higher learning need to start addressing this issue. We need our graduation rates to be better, but we also need to look at how we are measuring our graduation rates.
Thank you for this selective subject and it’s very important issue. Due to the importance of the subject we must rethink about the main reasons that stand beyond the unpromising results.
ReplyDeleteFirst point is the economic crisis in the United States. We know the fact that the United States is the most important and most relevant to other countries, this caused in a deep economic crisis which, in turn, impact on all aspects of the country. The economic recession affected federal spending on education, which in turn affected the learning outcomes in terms of quality and number, as well as the negative impact of economic recession on the support from business owners and also the individual support from the citizens.
Second, the increasing in cost of living is rising rapidly and shrinking job opportunities and the difficulty of access has led to student interest in obtaining the job instead of completing college. The outlooks for people who have graduate degrees are no longer an important such as obtaining a job with a good income that provides a good life for the individual.
In addition, numbers of public and private institutions that help to get a job are increased. Also, there are many high schools have programs that qualify and help students to get jobs in the labor market.
Finally, the Lack of incentives for students, impact on the continuity of completing higher education. For example, there are no alternatives to the personal attendance like Online classes to help the student to organize his time between study and work, and if there are any; it will be limited and not effective. A lack of financial incentives such as loans become into grants, if the student complete his studies at the specified time or before. Also, there are no financial incentives for institutions, for example, a bonus to the institution that its students complete their study ahead of time, so organizations can spend these sums to develop programs that help attract students as well as completion of their studies.
I think we are always challenged to think about how we define student success. By what metric do we ascertain whether our students are getting what they need out of their college educations? Graduation rates are just one way to determine this.
ReplyDeleteThe "soft" skill set attained by our graduates are not necessarily meeting the goals of today's job markets. We are short of labor in health and engineering fields, yet we have no jobs for those students in the social sciences because those degrees don't actually train students for an employment setting.
So, is it a crisis, or just a crisis-crisis that our graduation rates are falling "behind"? I use the quotes because like Amy mentioned, what if our rates aren't increasing because of the maturation and potential saturation of the industry.
Education is such a hot topic as far where the United States falls within academic success with other major competitors world wide. The major problem seen within the educational world is where the government has become and continues to play a role in what is to be taught and learned nation wide. There is a book called, "The Rise and Fall of American Public Schools." This book discusses how since the 1950's public education policies have been pretty much the same, and the issues within the classroom have all been pretty much the same, and the problem is, the solutions to these problems have been pretty much the same, but they have just used different terminology. Instead of actually solving a problem of academic success, the government is pushing for poliices and ideas to be used that are outdated and have been proven to not function correctly.
ReplyDeleteThere needs to have new techniques in place that actually create institutions for Americans to achieve success in more than just proving they can take tests. The article below shows how 94% of Americans expect their children to attend college, however, those students have next to no apprentice work in a field in which they could potentially be employed in, where in Europe apprenticeships are a norm.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/11/education.apprenticeship/index.html?iref=allsearch
There are other means of allowing for the United States to become more competitive in the world market as far as education goes and that is to stop teaching to tests and bringing more application into the daily lives of students, both in K-12 and higher education. In West Virginia, the superintendent is using Finland's model of academia to push his students in the classrooms. This can be found in the article below. When teachers just teach to tests, the student's lose the main idea of the "why" of what is being taught. This allows for other countries to push past the United States from an academic placement, but could potentially lead to financial placement as well. By US students finding jobs just for financial gain instead of pursuing an apprenticeship that could assist them further down the road.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/29/education.wv.finland/index.html?iref=allsearch
As a K-12 educator, I find the constant uphill battle with state and national standards really tears away from the overall education that students should and could be getting that will better assist them once leaving to college, or where ever they go. Teachers are not viewed in the US nearly as high in other countries, and this is seen through their low salaries and even more so with a quote from a CEO of a company who told me I was "just a glorified babysitter." Maybe this is why turnover in K-12 education is so high and graduation rates are falling.
The fact that other nations are catching up or surpassing the United States with college graduation rates is not surprising, when our high school students are so poorly prepared for college. For example, U.S. 15-year olds ranked 32nd in math and 17th in reading among 65 different nations in the most recently administered PISA exams ( http://educationnext.org/are-u-s-students-ready-to-compete/ ). Stanford's Bridge Project research suggests that higher education in America is not adequately meeting the needs of the approximately 80% of college students who attend our junior colleges and non-selective four-year universities (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/socialinnovation_kirst_collegestudents.shtml ). The Project's Michael Kirst believes that, while our high school Honors students receive disproportionate amounts of college preparatory support services, we are inadequately preparing the rest of our students for college-level work. Kirst recommends stronger communication between high schools and colleges with respect to what is needed to succeed in college, financial incentives for students completing college preparatory coursework, and better standardized test training for teachers.
ReplyDeleteWhen polled, college dropouts most often cite financial pressures, according to a national survey of 600 22-30 year olds (http://www.publicagenda.org/theirwholelivesaheadofthem ). Respondents most often cited conflicts between work and school and the need to fully support oneself financially as the primary reasons for dropping out. When the pollsters asked what would keep them in school, respondents suggested an overall 25% reduction in college costs, more convenient class schedules, health insurance coverage, child/daycare, more meaningful coursework, and better guidance counseling. For the hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level work and who require remedial instruction and support (42% of community college freshmen -a third of which are 19 yrs old or younger- and about 20% of incoming four-year college freshmen require at least one remedial course), a study by the Alliance for Excellent Education ( http://www.all4ed.org/files/archive/publications/remediation.pdf ) found that remedial college coursework correlates poorly with college graduation success. Indeed, the study found that the leading predictor that a college student will drop out is if they have taken remedial reading or not.
Studies reveal that lower-income and minority students have much less success at graduating with a degree. Only 30% of African Americans aged 25-34 today have at least an associates degree, and less than 20% of Latinos have an associates degree or higher. Students from the highest income families are eight times as likely as those from the lowest income families to earn a bachelor's degree by age 24. In any case, the majority of our young adults must possess higher levels of math and science skills, as well as competent verbal and critical reasoning skills, in order to keep up in fields like computer science, nursing, engineering, and accounting. And higher education must partner with primary- and secondary-level education in order to meet this challenge. Higher education student affairs can assist by expanding and improving academic success and counseling services for first-generation and minority & low-income students, and to creatively help students solve work-school conflicts . If we can come together as a nation and educational community to vigorously address these problems, then we will go a long ways towards maintaining our nation’s socioeconomic vitality.
This post and the comments raise a number of issues about a simple question with no simple answers. A few points to consider when having discussions about graduation rates include:
ReplyDelete1) the pool of applicants. Many countries have a rather clear system which tracks students into various types of education programs from an early age based on standardized tests. This is an efficient way to make the most of limited resources. People with an aptitude for particular types of work and education are provided access to the educational 'best fit'. The values and history of this country make such programs 'un-American'. The point here is that other countries have the infrastructure, histories, and values that make such tracking possible.
2)our colleges and universities do a great deal more than simply graduate students...we are also key hubs for research, we offer professional level athletic programs, we provide numerous services to our communities, cities, youth/senior citizens, and states....we might graduate a higher percentage if all our energies and resources were focus only on undergraduate education (but then we would not be who we are).
3) many of the countries to who we compare our graduation rates either have a rapidly growing economy or a more stable/robust middle class...they are similar to us in the 1950s. People who have stable employment and earn a decent living are able to (and encourage) their kids to go to college and show how the degree will benefit them.
4) other countries do not provide remedial course work as we know it here, to some degree because they do not have to...the students that are not prepared are either working on other types of degrees or are not admitted to public schools.
5) it would be interesting to see how much GDP each country spends on their k-12 and higher education systems and if that correlates with the % of citizens who have some post-secondary education (a potentially interesting study). We spend a lot on the military and correctional system.
My questions back to President Obama would be 1) why is this increase needed and 2) what are we as a country willing to give up to make this a reality? If it is not politically feasible to give up what is needed to make it happen, perhaps there are other conversation we all need to be having first.
I, too wonder, why 50%? I wonder why stop there? Why not shoot for 60%? I mean, if 50% seems so unattainable at this particular point in time, than why not? Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of high education; I am an advocate of working hard and seeing the pay-ff in the end (both individually and on a macro-level), but I agree, we do not have the infrastructure to support that vision. I am probably not supposed to say this being that I do work in an area of enrollment management…but, here goes. Maybe college is not for everybody….and maybe we should be okay with that. I see plenty of people without a college degree and they seem happy with their life. I see some who make very good money (some more than me ) and I see some that earn less but still really enjoy life. So, maybe the goal should not be, “let’s see X% go to college”. Maybe the goals should be that whoever wants to attend college, should have the opportunity to do so.
ReplyDeleteI am also familiar with the Russian educational system, and I would argue that they are not “passing people along irrelevant of performance”. I think, rather, that the performance must be demonstrated very early on. For example, I have a relative who was identified in her primary years in Russia and was than tracked throughout her secondary education to become an engineer. Don’t get me wrong, I do not quite agree with this tracking system, but she went onto college and continued to graduate school in engineering. In addition, she was required to learn 3 languages, in addition to Russian! It seems like the other countries are not just bring more kids into college, but they are producing extremely bright graduates.