Crossing the Finish Line: An Interview on Diminishing Grad Rates

By Toby Lowenfels
September 17, 2009
7 comments

bowen_crossingOver the past 25 years, graduating from a public university in just four years became tantamount to leaving the party before it even started. This is a notion raised by Dr. Michael S. McPherson, one of the authors of Crossing the Finish Line, released this month from Princeton University Press. Recently, Dr. McPherson spoke with TakePart about the diminishing graduation rates at public universities and the disastrous effect this trend could have on the economy.

Consider this fact: fewer than 30 percent of 8th graders will earn a BA by the age of 26. And less than 60 percent of the students entering four-year colleges in America today are graduating. Crossing the Finish Line offers a staggering amount of data that focuses on patterns of education at public universities, relating differences in academic preparedness and family circumstances among students. This information is presented in a concise fashion, with additional appendixes of data available online.

After the jump, Dr. Michael S. McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation and the former president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, talks about what TakePart readers can do to improve graduation rates. Q. What inspired you to get involved with the issue of public university graduation rates?

All three authors were concerned that giving so much attention to the (important) problem of getting people into college was not being matched by attention to the equally important problem of helping them succeed after they got there. And most students go to public universities. So if you wanted to change results, that was the place to look to understand the problem and begin developing solutions.

Q. What are some of the most important aspects of this issue?

Three big ones (there are others) are: -Too many able students from low-income families and families of color go to colleges that are less demanding than the best that would admit them, and that lowers their graduation rates. -Doing well in high school--getting good grades--is a better incremental predictor of graduation from college than admissions test scores. It pays to work hard in school. -Making college cheap for low income students through a combination of pricing and student aid grants improves graduation rates; keeping the net price low for high income students doesn't have this effect in our data. So directing aid or low prices toward students who really need the help makes sense.

Q. Why has education attainment in the United States been on a plateau in recent years?

The best work on this question is in the book The Race Between Education and Technology, by Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz. They show how important the persistent increase in education attainment over much of the past century has been to economic growth. They suggest that we are approaching the limit on how much we can do just by expanding grade school and high school enrollment, which was hte big task up into the second half of the last century. We now need qualitative improvement in grade schools and high schools and big improvements in getting people into and especially through college.

Q. Do you think we will be able to reach President Obama's goal of having the highest proportion of college grads in the world by 2020?

We are not forecasters. We believe that there is room for tremendous improvement and that we should start now.

Q. What kinds of actions can TakePart readers take to help improve graduation rates?

A big problem is that disadvantaged young people often lack for sound advice from people who have experience of our bewilderingly complicated higher education system, which offers many alternative options and very intricate procedures for getting financial help. A big thing individuals can do is to reach out to young people through volunteer efforts to help close those knowledge gaps--and also to support more systematic efforts in schools and communities to share such knowledge. Those who care about the issues can also work politically to get more money to students who need it, and to deliver it there simply, and can press colleges and universities to hold themselves accountable to improve their graduation rates, while maintaining high standards.

Q. What do you see as being the best and worst-case scenario for the future of public universities in the United States?

In the best case, we grasp the point that effective investment in better education at all levels is one of the best infrastructure investments the nation can make, and we focus the energies of leaders and citizens around studying the evidence and making the changes we need. In the worst case...we just don't want to go there.

Comments

7
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Claire and HPL's discussion is very interesting... so much emphasis is placed on admission but the hoopla of college admissions is completely different than actually doing the work of being in college. i was shocked by the statistics in this article- it might sound weird, but most people i know who went to college, with a very wide range of prestige levels, graduated in 4-5 years. then again, many of them moved back home and are currently living in their parents basements. so i think claire's point is very smart that at 18, we're not prepared to make the most of a college education. i personally feel like i squandered mine and if i went back now would get so much more out of the opportunity. 18 is too young to know what you want to do for the rest of your life and thus many people end up in careers they soon realize aren't their passion, or with a generalized education not in what they really want to know, and end up returning for grad school. maybe the solution is to put less pressure on high school students to go to college right out of high school but let them wait until they are more personally invested in getting the education and aren't just responding to external expectations. maybe if they enrolled for the 'right' reasons more students would graduate?
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Glad to see you included what your readers can do to help. I feel I often read articles that leave that part out.
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Great point. Agreed all around.
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Yes, Claire, you make a good point. With that said, I think that the problem is not simply the lack of support within the universities, or the lack of maturity on the part of the students, but rather, the attitude espoused toward gaining admission to college. Throughout the process, the idea should be impressed upon students that admission to college is not and end goal, but the beginning of a new series of challenges. Having attended a public high school that boasts an incredibly high college admissions rate, I can say firsthand that this is not the case, and as a result, many students falter when they get to college.
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Fair enough, Henry, but you don't think that not being willing to be self-motivated or work hard is indicative of a basic lack of maturity on some level? I remember being 18 and completely shocked at the different level of intellectual work demanded of me at a college level. I agree that there need to be greater resources within universities, especially large public ones, to foster that development and provide accountability for students who are willing to put in the work required to excel but need some extra support.
posted on Sep 17, 2009
I dunno, Claire, I think it's a bit of a copout to say that kids who don't graduate college in four years can't handle it or are not "mature enough for college coursework." The idea of "figuring out what you want to do," and taking the time to do so, is an extremely modern one, and I think that many people who lack motivation or a willingness to put in hard work use this concept as an excuse. Instead, I think this book speaks to a very interesting issue that I've personally never thought about: there's more of a push than ever to get kids into college, and each year more students matriculate. But what happens when the external forces pushing them are no longer there? In other words, is college admission really the end goal? (As an interesting side note, these graduation rates do not surprise me -- I attended a private university, and amongst my group of 10-15 close friends, less than 5 of us graduated in 4 years.)
posted on Sep 17, 2009
Granted, I attended a small private college, but one thing I noticed in my peers was not all 18 year olds are emotionally prepared / intellectually mature enough for college coursework and responsibilities. The people I knew who dropped out and / or took time off were those who really did need to work for a few years and figure out what they wanted to do. I'd be interested to see how the numbers in this book compare to the numbers of non-traditional students completing their undergraduate degree slightly later in life.