Let’s say a prototypical U.S. graduating class has one hundred students.
Of that hundred, sixty-seven enroll directly into a two- or four-year college. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
Of the sixty-seven who do enroll, only forty-eight will make it into their second year of college (whether at the same institution or a different one)… the rest drop out. (Source: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center via NPR; computation mine)
Of those forty-eight who make it into year two, only twenty-eight will have earned a degree even six years after enrolling in college. (Source: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Persistence and Retention; computation mine)
That’s worth repeating:
Of the one hundred graduating seniors in that prototypical class, only twenty-eight will statistically have earned a college degree within six years of leaving high school.
There are a multiple ways to interpret this.
On one hand, we could indict the K-12 school system for not preparing kids to persevere in the post-secondary education system.
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