The Foreign Service Journal, December 2011

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 107 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT dent in providing him or her with the tools and support needed to graduate on time, if at all. A School’s Responsibility Most students who drop out of college don’t fail out, researchers have found. They leave because they don’t perceive that the educa- tional benefit of college exceeds the substantial expense of time and money — especially not when it’s coupled with indifferent bureaucra- cies that pride themselves more on inane complexities than actually helping students. In fact, of the millions of new stu- dents who stream into colleges each year, barely half will graduate on time. Many won’t graduate at all. According to the 2010 census, near- ly 34 million Americans over the age of 25 list their highest level of edu- cation as “some college, no degree.” Why have we accepted extremely high dropout rates at some colleges and unimpressive graduation rates throughout much of higher educa- tion? Washington Monthly suggests we do so because we lack a broadly shared sense of what an acceptable graduation rate would be. A College Degree’s Value Everyone agrees that all children need a high school diploma. That’s why high school dropout factories are condemned without question. College, by contrast, isn’t for every- one. “So it’s easy to see college dropouts as people who didn’t get what they probably didn’t deserve,” as Miller and Ly put it. But while some people don’t, in fact, need college, most do, they note. Forty years ago, the majority of high school graduates went no further with their education. Today, three-quar- ters of high school graduates go after a college degree, because they know that a career paying a middle-class wage almost always requires one. Efforts to raise graduation rates could give a real boost not just to American higher education, but to society at large. ■