As students get more skeptical of the value of a college degree in the face of higher debt, the regular chorus in response is the insistence that even if that price tag is high, there’s still a significant economic benefit to having that college degree. The big, glaring problem that logic doesn’t take into account is the growing number of students who take on debt and never walk across the stage to claim that oh-so-important piece of paper.
Almost half of all the students that start college fail to finish.
The troubling trend toward giving up on college early is bad for everybody. Schools lose tuition dollars. Students take on debt they have to pay back even without the extra earning power of a degree. The nation ends up with less college-educated workers and voters. There’s no real winner here.
Before schools can start to do anything about the problem, it’s necessary to understand just what’s going on. There are a few primary reasons students tend to quit before finishing.
1) Balancing school and work.
This was the top choice in a survey done by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation a few years ago, with 71% of respondents saying that work responsibilities contributed to the decision.
For many students, it’s not an option to lean on financial aid and work-study programs. Holding down a job quickly makes getting to class and completing all required assignments especially challenging.
2) Concerns about cost.
This should surprise no one. Cost concerns are behind which colleges students choose to attend; it only makes sense that they would be on this list as well. At many universities, tuition costs go up every year. Changes in a student’s personal life or family situation can mean a big drop between financial aid from one year to the next, or a change in the family’s ability to afford the cost.
Or maybe everything stays the same, but a student just gets fed up after reading one too many articles about the college debt crisis and the difficulty her colleagues have finding jobs. Whatever their particular situation, students have to think about the financial cost of their years in school, and sometimes it’s just too bitter of a pill to swallow.
3) Lack of preparation.
If you spend much time talking to college professors, you’ve probably heard this issue come up. Many students make it to college without the proper preparation. While this is an inconvenience to the faculty who must work to make up the lessons students don’t manage to learn in high school, for the students themselves the results can be more damaging.
A student that can’t keep up in class and feels like he’s constantly falling behind his peers will be much more inclined to give up before finishing. If it looks like you’re not going to succeed at getting that degree anyways, why keep paying tuition?
All of these are issues colleges can help with, if they pick up on them early enough. Students struggling with cost or with balancing the responsibilities of work and school could have much of that issue resolved with better financial aid or scholarship options. Students that get to school underprepared can work on catching up with their peers with the help of student remediation programs or more focused attention from faculty. The challenge is recognizing these problems where they occur and taking the steps to do something about them.
