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Stupid in America Part II


monsoon

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http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_4301525

Interesting numbers.

The nation's college-educated populace is aging ... the [percentage]of adults age 35 to 64 with college degrees [is 39 percent].

...

And while college enrollment among young people generally remains strong, few students ultimately earn degrees, the report said.

About 35 percent of the nation's 18- to -24-year-olds attend college ...Yet only 17 out of every 100 college students ultimately receive a degree or certificate.

While it's good that college remains challenging enough to weed out the not-so-bright (or lazy), it's startling to see how severe a shortage of college graduates we could have.

We may end up with 17-20% of the adult population having college degrees. That's not too pleasant a thought.

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What would you chalk that 17% up to?

Laziness? Grade inflation through high school? Parents doing their kid's homework? Stupidity?

I have no clue, but it's quite dire.

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EDIT:

We may end up with 17-20% of the adult population having college degrees. That's not too pleasant a thought.

Wait, it's worse than I thought, I may have read it improperly. Only 35% go to college, and 17 of 100 college students graduate .

So, as it stands now, 5.95% of my age group ends up with a degree?

That can't be right.

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Highereducation.org, the source, publishes the statistics in a very confusing manner. It doesn't help that the article was poorly written...

Education obtainment is decreasing, but not in as serious a manner as I suggested in my previous posts. I had some idea the numbers were problematic, that's why I said "That can't be right". I probably should have held off on those, but I've never learned anything from being right.

It looks like the biggest problem is how the US competes with the rest of the world, there has been little to no improvement from the older adults to the current generation of college students. Other countries of the world are doing much better in educating their youth.

Okay, let's look at the numbers.

Of the older adults (Ages 35 to 64), 39% have some sort of college degree. For the younger adults, (ages 25 to 34), 39% have a college degree. No movement there.

The percentage of Americans ages 25 to 29 with a bachelor's degree is 29%.

Some facts on my age group

"High school graduation rates have declined, although those who do graduate are more likely to attend college. "[1]

In the best performing states, about 66% of students in four-year colleges and universities complete a bachelor’s degree within six years.[1]

80 percent of the U.S. students, that attend college, attend institutions that accept all qualified applicants, community colleges, open admissions colleges. [2] The graduation rate at these institutions is 25.8%, as opposed to 74.6% at most selective colleges.[3] 63 percent of four-year college students earn a degree within six years [5].

64% of students go to some sort of college after high school [3]

35% of young adults ages 18 to 24 are CURRENTLY enrolled in college[4]. That 17 out of 100 number must be the number of students that complete a degree at a certain time. I don't quite understand the point of that number, it's more confusing than anything - I'm still not absolutely sure I understand it.

Thoughts

They don't make it easy to find this information, this post was exceptionally laborious to write.

It looks like the percentages come out to be about the same, there is no real improvement.

I don't know if a single sentence in that post made any sense, but I have to get some work done. 3 hours on urbanplanet is enough for one day. ;)

Oh and my footnotes are not properly done, but they will have to do.

[1] http://measuringup.highereducation.org/com...ction.cfm#_edn6

[2] http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgu...st15kirst.shtml

[3] http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/200...ege-cover_x.htm

[4] Was represented in a confusing way in the article. I understood it to be the percentage of high school students that ever enrolled in college.

[5] http://www.azcentral.com/families/educatio...duation-ON.html

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I don't have kids, so I don't have much insight into this except for a friend who's got a daughter in 3rd grade. She's always saying how public schools have "dumbed down" lessons to the lowest common denominator.

In Massachusetts, kids have to pass standardized do-or-die testing in order to move to the next grade level (and graduate). Unfortunately so many teachers who were commended for their creative methods have basically been forced out of the schools because they're not training students to pass tests.

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