OUR OPINION: To cut college costs, raise rates — graduation rates, that is
November 27, 2012 at 3:30 pm in Grand Forks Herald
By raising graduation rates, lawmakers and college officials will be taking what might be the most efficient and cost-effective step toward making college more affordable for all. Continue Reading
Another way to raise graduation rates is to be more selective in the admissions process and raise the standards for admission. Another way is to make the k – 12 education more rigorous to prepare students for college. Not everyone should or could go to college.
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The reason that private selective colleges achieve their graduation rates is because they have stricter admission processes that select the best and brightest and not an open admissions process.
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For years UND and NDSU have competed for student enrollment as if it were a football game. The Herald hasn’t helped with its frontpage reports every fall, buying into the fallacy of quantity=quality. Problem is, when numbers become the priority, qualifications get ignored. Of course, there are other consequences which I have mentioned before.
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That might be a part of it, but it’s pretty clear they pay more attention to the individual student while at college as well. You don’t get the loyalty many private colleges have by treating students poorly or not caring.
In many ways students at NDSU and UND are treated like a necessary inconvenience.
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Another way would be to stop offering worthless degrees like a Degree in Film making.
Offer classes that actually have the ability to move a person into a job after graduation.
Give me a BA in Liberal arts with a minor in African American Studies and i can serve you coffee at Starbucks.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Or alternatively you can get a BA in liberal arts, go on to law school and then get elected to public office.
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What about having colleges and universities simply get back to what they should be doing – teaching! One of the reasons college costs have mushroomed is that most schools have become so administrative and staff-heavy. There’s an office, and a administrator, and a Dean for just about anything you can think of (and many that defy imagination), and most normal people would simply be astonished if they knew how much just goes to pushing paper. So many resources go into non-academic, non-teaching areas.
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I remember reading that UND was recently highly ranked for the quality of it’s online degree programs, particularly it’s distance engineering program.
I assume that many who take online courses are nontraditional students; working adults. Self-supporting, working adults cannot graduate in 4 years as easily as students straight out of high school who have access to more financial aid as well as parental support.
One way to get these nontraditional adult students through the pipeline faster would be to amend financial aid regulations so that asynchronous online courses qualify for financial aid. Currently, one cannot take out a Stafford loan for asynchronous online courses.
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Once again Kevin, you have taken a kernal of truth and turned it into something completely WRONG.
The most lucrative US Government program in the history of the United States was the post WWII GI Bill. It returned $16 in tax revenue for every dollar spent.
By allowing people who would otherwise not go to college an opportunity to go, they got higher paying jobs and therefore paid more taxes.
Your kernal of truth: the federal student loan system is in desperate need of reform. That is not because the idea is bad, it is because lax oversight has allowed a few bad apples to taint the entire program.
The reforms would be easy and common sense: there is nothing wrong with a for profit school. There are many in this country. As Gene will be happy to point out, all state schools are in fact for profit in everything except name. There is nothing wrong with turning a profit.
There is something wrong with $10,000 medical assistant and nursing assistant courses. There is something wrong with granting an associate’s or bachelor’s degree that does not transfer.
If the Feds simply said: your school must be accredited, it’s credits must transfer, and you cannot charge more than “X” percentage of what the job you are training for pays per year, the abuses would all come to an end and you would not have students strapped with $10000 worth of loans for a job that pays $15000 a year.
No more sound bites Kevin.
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So you are proposing eliminating academic scholarships for academic excellence, that in many cases, are supported by endowments from private citizens? Second, eliminate public financial aid to those or those families that cannot afford college but their child can and will complete college. Thanks a lot. I came from a poor family that had no resources for college, got through on a partial academic scholarship, my GI bill and working full time including my graduate level work. So you would not have wanted me to go to college? Elitist is the mildest term I can use for your comment.
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Fish is correct, you cannot put trash in and expect to get anything but trash out. That is extremely poorly worded but accurate. If you are unprepared for college you will fail. It is as simple as that.
That does not mean you do not NEED a college degree or vocational certificate to survive it today’s economy. Ask any locked out ACS employee: the days of graduating HS, getting on at the local plant, earning $15 – $25 an hour with full benefits are over. Those jobs simply do not exist anymore. No amount of bellyaching will make them come back.
In order to provide what the students need, you need a multi tiered system. Gene has explained why that will not work in ND. He has some extremely valid points and the institutional history to go with them. My point is ND has no choice but to change.
In order to increase graduation rates you either improve the quality of student at the front end, or turn into a diploma mill aka Dickinson State at the other end.
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“In order to increase graduation rates you either improve the quality of student at the front end, or turn into a diploma mill aka Dickinson State at the other end.”
As numerous articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education point out, the solution is more and more becoming the latter.
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We could cut a lot of costs if we closed about half of the schools in this state, we have far too many.
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