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Time Is the Enemy

October 3, 2011 Comments off

Time Is the Enemy
Source: Complete College America
From Summary (PDF):

Inside these pages you will get an unprecedented look behind the ivy-covered walls of America’s public colleges and universities and into how well they are educating all — we repeat, all — of today’s college students.

The all part is what’s new.

Surprisingly, until this report, no one has bothered to measure and report the success or failure of all U.S. college students. We’ve been tracking only students who are first-time and are going full-time. That’s all the federal government requires of colleges and universities, and until now few exceeded this minimal standard.

But 4 of every 10 public college students are able to attend only part-time. Which means leaders have been making policy decisions about higher education absent critical information about 40 percent of the students, as if their success or failure was less important than that of “traditional” full-time students. How can this be? Worse, there’s more. Start full-time and then transfer to a different institution? You haven’t been counted. Receive some of the billions of dollars in federal grants given out each year to attend college? Few have followed up to check if you dropped out or graduated. Older students, students trapped in remediation, students pursuing valuable career certificates … all have been virtually invisible to policymakers, elected officials, and taxpayers … until now.

Categories: Complete College America, education, postsecondary, social and cultural issues
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