Who Gets to Graduate?

I didn't read the whole article, but from the introduction, it seemed she failed the test because she wasn't used to studying hard in high school. Richer students do have more resources but I can't figure why money was a relevant factor in this case.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#6

Post by tlb » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:40 PM UTC

This is interesting because it shows a specific mechanism by which smart kids of non-college-educated parents drop out. She failed a test in her first month in college, and her mother told her maybe she wasn't meant to be there. I vaguely remember failing a test early in college too, but it never would have occurred to my (intelligentsia-class) parents that I wasn't meant to be educated. I can only imagine how discouraging that feels.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#7

Post by Tyr42 » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:41 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #3

further reading on getting dramatically underqualified students to graduate anyway: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm At some point, you wonder: what if we gave the same level of support to the qualified students?

Well, in the article, it does say that after the mind-set intervention was applied to all the student (minus the control group), the gap between the at risk group and the affluent group cut in half, as the affluent group's drop out rate was not really affected by it.

And again, as they say, it was only 45 minutes, and it didn't "do" a lot. It did however, change how the students interpreted bad events in the future, and reduced the chance of the student feeling that, say, because they failed a test, they don't belong in college at all.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#8

Post by jmz92 » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:42 PM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #5

I didn't read the whole article, but from the introduction, it seemed she failed the test because she wasn't used to studying hard in high school. Richer students do have more resources but I can't figure why money was a relevant factor in this case.

The point isn't that she didn't learn to study. If you had read just a little bit farther, you would have seen the real reason: at the first minor setback she met, she began to question whether she really belonged at a prestigious four-year school. That's a pretty understandable reaction given the culture shock she experienced in going to UT. Rich people with educated parents get to feel like they belong at colleges; poor and working class people don't.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#9

Post by Tyr42 » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:46 PM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #5

I didn't read the whole article, but from the introduction, it seemed she failed the test because she wasn't used to studying hard in high school. Richer students do have more resources but I can't figure why money was a relevant factor in this case.

The larger difference is what happens after a test is failed and a student is feeling down. It seems that the more affluent group has more "identity formation" in that they know that they belong at college, whereas the more at risk groups (like students with parents that aren't college educated) sometimes panic, and feel like they don't belong at college, after a mistake of similar size. And that feeling is what causes them to drop out, more than X number of failed tests.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#10

Post by ykumar6 » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:47 PM UTC

Uh oh..

"But here’s the key — none of them know that they’re in the bottom quartile.” The first rule of the Dashboard, in other words, is that you never talk about the Dashboard."