The Financial Effect on Families (not to mention the emotional damage
to families and students)
The National Problem describes the trends across the country. But let me describe the more personal version,
the one I have witnessed unfold with students sitting across my desk.
On their own for the first time in their young lives, college students (not just freshmen) don’t know how
to meet the more rigorous standards of college academics and campus life. They’re in trouble, and they
don’t know how to solve their problem.
They watch, frustrated and defeated, as their dreams of being an engineer, an accountant, a teacher, or health care professional disappear because, as students, they cannot handle the coursework. To illustrate how one problem leads to a complex of others, let’s turn to the problem of high school cramming for a moment. Let’s use it to see how the academic dominoes fall.
Watching the Dominoes Fall
Subjects that students took in high school surface again, but at a college level. The college instructor
expects a certain level of competence from the students enrolled in the course, a basic aptitude that grows
out of the students’ high school foundation. The course begins at that level of competence with little or no review time.
The students who got a good grade in the high school course by cramming and forgetting can’t cope with the demands
or
the pace of the college course. Their choice? Drop the course or take a low grade. Both actions have serious ramifications:
How it affects other courses. If students begin scrambling, trying to make up for the deficit in learning
in one or two courses, students are really in trouble. Why?
Students now have to spend extra time, working to make up the deficit.
They begin robbing
work time from other courses, trying to stay apace in the troubled course(s).
Having robbed time from other courses, students fall behind in these courses,
where
they
could likely earn a good grade.
Eventually, the students realize that they cannot salvage a good grade in the troubled course(s).
They decide to drop the course(s).
In trying to save a grade in the troubled course(s), they have sacrificed their grades in all their courses.
Now their overall grade point suffers. A low grade point jeopardizes their standing in the major,
professional or graduate program. If this is the case, they can never recover.
How it affects their career path
A low overall grade point may damage the student’s standing in his/her chosen academic
program — or it may disqualify the student from the program altogether.
How dropping courses extends the years needed to earn a degree
Dropping the course — and thus failing to fulfill a prerequisite for future courses — alters the
sequencing
of needed courses. Not all courses are offered every semester. Drop a course in
the fall,
and it
may not be offered again
until the following fall. Getting a degree in four years is no longer possible.
Dropping the course and not repeating it may disqualify the student from a major. Now the student
must find another course of study. The new course of study may or may not require the other courses
the student has already taken. The student may have to begin accumulating another set of
courses
required courses for graduation in the new program. Beginning a new program of study will
prolong an education.This frequently happens.
If the dropped course is a requirement of a program (and if the student has not jeopardized
his or her standing in that program), the dropped course can be repeated in another semester.
Taking the course again will extend the length of an education.
The effect on parents’ finances
Families are making financial sacrifices to give their children a college education — a cost with an inflation rate rivaled
only by healthcare. However, while parents anticipate a four-year program, their child’s college career can drag on
for five, six, or more years. These unanticipated extra years can become a tremendous financial burden
to a family.
In addition to the cost mentioned earlier — $28,000+ at a private college and $15,000 at a public college — there’s also
the extraordinary pace of increase to be reckoned with. With only 63% of college enrollees graduating within six years,
a huge number of parents make the growing investment yet never reap the hoped-for return: a degree.
