Article of Interest: How to Help College Students Graduate
The Foundation invests heavily in advising our Scholars so that they succeed in their education and hopefully beyond. This recent opinion piece by David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, that ran in Wednesday’s The New York Times, gives a glimpse of the value of ample, available advising to college-going students.
How to Help College Students Graduate
AMERICAN students are enrolling in college in record numbers, but they’re also dropping out in droves. Barely half of those who start four-year colleges, and only a third of community college students, graduate. That’s one of the worst records among developed nations, and it’s a substantial drain on the economy. The American Institutes for Research estimates the cost of those dropouts, measured in lost earnings and taxes, at $4.5 billion. Incalculable are the lost opportunities for social mobility and the stillborn professional careers.
There’s a remedy at hand, though, and it’s pretty straightforward. Nationwide, universities need to give undergraduates the care and attention akin to what’s lavished on students at elite institutions.
If that help is forthcoming, graduation rates more than double, according to several evaluations of an innovative program at the City University of New York’s community colleges.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/opinion/how-to-help-college-students-graduate.html?_r=0