a) has this study been reproduced (i.e. the Dashboard business)
b) still smells like Lysenko-ism
Who Gets to Graduate?
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#32Not to divert from the main point of the article, but this is frightening:
More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary.
It is astonishing that 2/5 of American students can be saddled with huge debts without having generated the means to repay that debt (increased wages through a college degree).
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#33For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…
My own experience supports this claim. While I didn't grow up poor, my middle-class parents separated the week I started my freshman year of college. What money there was went to lawyers instead of college tuition. Realizing I was on my own, I took two jobs and tried to make passing grades (mostly succeeding), but after a year I was forced to face financial reality. Already in a lot of debt, I dropped out and never went back.
So when it comes to "who gets to graduate," I have little doubt that financial and emotional support are more important than academic ability.
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#34The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, whil…
> I find this very interesting in light of studies I've seen in Canada and Europe: Those studies all found that parental income was irrelevant after regressing for the overwhelming effect of parental education.
All past US studies I've seen have shown the same thing, or at least that parental educational attainment is a better predictor of a persons educational attainment than any other factor, including parental income.
> Of course, this would reinforce the story being told even more: Parents with college degrees encourage and expect their progeny to attend and graduate from college, while parents without that higher education do not provide an analogous proof of possibility.
Or: a lot of the education necessary to success in formal education happens outside of its bounds in less-formal interactions, including, especially, those in the home.
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#35The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, whil…
They both could be the same variable. If "Wealth doesn't matter once you factor in parental education" and "Parental education doesn't matter once you factor in wealth" are both true, then it's probably the same effect.
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#36What's interesting is that I had a very similar experience as a white male (first to go to college out of my siblings/family), and got a 0.4 the first semester. Things seemed easy in high school, so I thought I knew what I was doing, until I realized that University is serious business academically. With friends failing out right and left, I forced myself to attend paid tutoring sessions (worth it) and meet others wh…
Universities should weigh the first semester less and cap the number of hours taken. I know plenty of people who fucked up their first semester due to culture shock/feelings of isolation.
MIT has pass fail for the first term. http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/first_term_freshman_yea...
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#37Not to divert from the main point of the article, but this is frightening: More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary. It is astonishing that 2/5 of American students can be saddled with huge debts without h…
Mind that '4 year college' includes a lot of places that are outside of what you may be thinking of. U. of Phoenix is an example that is very predatory in their loans. Also, many bible and other religious colleges may be included and there are a lot more of those that you'd think. The reasons for dropping out are also complicated: Having a baby, family health problems, personal health issues, mental health, debt from other sources, plain not wanting to continue anymore, drinking or smoking in the dorms, getting engaged (at BYU they say 'ring by spring or your money back') , etc. As with any population, there are a lot of circumstances. Still, I agree with you, the debt incurred here is unsustainable, especially as employers see a degree as a basic test for employment more so.
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#38What's interesting is that I had a very similar experience as a white male (first to go to college out of my siblings/family), and got a 0.4 the first semester. Things seemed easy in high school, so I thought I knew what I was doing, until I realized that University is serious business academically. With friends failing out right and left, I forced myself to attend paid tutoring sessions (worth it) and meet others wh…
Universities should weigh the first semester less and cap the number of hours taken. I know plenty of people who fucked up their first semester due to culture shock/feelings of isolation.
At Oxford the first year exams (prelims or mods) don't count towards your final degree grade, but you can be kicked out for failing them.
Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#39 The distribution of grades ... didn’t follow the nice sweeping bell curve you
might expect. Instead, they fell into what he calls a “bimodal distribution.”Re: Who Gets to Graduate?
#40I'm curious: how would the achievement gap change if all or most post-secondary education was delivered online instead of at physical colleges/universities?
I know someone who teaches at a community college and she said that student groups who normally do poorly in regular classes do even worse in online courses. Random paper here seems to agree with that: http://www.ashe.ws/images/Gross%20and%20Kleinman%20-%20Need%...