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Report: Texas Fails its School Children on Higher Ed
A report by Houston Endowment Inc. shows that only 20% of students graduated from college or earned vocational ed certification.
Only one in five eighth graders in Texas earns any higher education credentials over an 11 year period according to a report by Houston Endowment Inc. Higher education credentials include vocational schools, colleges and universities and the new index tracks how many students pursue any form of post-secondary education.
The data being analyzed covers students where eighth graders between 1996 and 1998. While enrollment in higher education did increase year on year, certification and completion rates stayed consistently around 20%. This perhaps indicates that the best way to increase the number of schoolchildren who go on to earn a college diploma isn’t to simply increase admissions.
About 41 percent of Asian eighth-graders received a college degree or higher education certification. Other groups followed with 27.6 percent of white eighth-graders receiving higher education credentials, 14.1 percent of Native Americans, 11.6 percent of Hispanics and 11.4 percent of African Americans.
Texan is considerably lower than the national average in this measure as the overall graduation/certification level for eighth graders in the United States is 30%. The only state lagging behind Texas on this measure is Florida.
This is not the first report to highlight the low graduation rate in Texas.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board recently released a study showing that only two state universities — the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University — graduated more than half their students in four years. Texas A&M had a 51 percent rate and UT Austin graduated 53 percent of their incoming freshmen.
While there will remain arguments over whether the low graduation rates are a result of state funding cuts, bad teachers that tenure prevents the districts from replacing, or even that those darn youngsters today are too lazy to succeed, the simple fact is that more than a fifth of a random class should be able to earn a college diploma or vocational certification. Whether you believe that everyone should go to college or that college should only be for the brighter students, the simple fact remains that a 20% combined rate is too low. The children are being failed somewhere.
Houston Endowment is to continue providing this data over the coming years and it is hoped that more states start to track this measure.
Monday
March 19th, 2012
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Comments
[...] shows that only 20% of students graduated from college or earned vocational ed certification.”(more) Comments (0) Go to main news [...]
Did it ever occur to anyone that not everyone wants to go to college?
Did it ever occur to you that as long as kids choose to attend college, the state can’t deny them the education they are actually paying for?
Didn’t read where the state is doing that. Seems irrelevant.
This report covers both college and vocational degrees. I could buy that not everyone wants to go to college, but what kind of prosects are facing Texas students who neither graduate from college NOR get any vocational training?
The prospects are dire, but I still don’t see how we can force them to either. “While enrollment in higher education did increase year on year, certification and completion rates stayed consistently around 20%. This perhaps indicates that the best way to increase the number of schoolchildren who go on to earn a college diploma isn’t to simply increase admissions.” The enrollment is increasing year to year but the rate stays the same. Doesn’t that mean the overall number completing a degree is increasing? `
Or it could mean that the quality of the instruction is bad. Or that that the classes that are required for graduation aren’t available. Or that the price of education is too high, or grows too fast and doesn’t allow students to plan for the expenses. There are a lot of reasons we need to look at and eliminate before we can throw up our hands and say “Well, they probably weren’t meant to graduate in the first place.” That’s like looking at the low number of women in science and immediately jump to the conclusion “girls are just bad at this stuff.” Sure, that’s a convenient point of view cause it doesn’t require any further action. Its very convenience should make it suspect.
Ok, ignore the last sentence cause it’s just a gimme excuse to derail the argument. But let me put it this way: just cause it’s simple to say “it is so because God says so,” it still is a very crappy way to study the laws of physics. That’s a better example.
Read the article.
okay, I guess we are looking at this from 2 different standpoints. I look at it from a H.S. point of view, what you are talking about are issues at the college level itself. From the college level there are issues, from the h.s. level there is nothing here. But, on a second idea, I also believe we are selling kids on college (vocational) as their only choice, and while it may be their best choice, aren’t we doing them a diservice? How about the military? There are alternatives, and since our educational system has changed very little, especially college and vocational, to where they are set up like in the past where not everyone was expected to attend, but now we expect the majority to go, the problem lies at that level. Once again I believe we have a perspective difference.
But college or vocational schools are their only choices. It isn’t like they are equipped for a career of any kind right after high school. Not for the most part, anyway. In the UK, for example, very few people go to the university (our college-equivalent.) That is standard. They can get fulfilling employment and make a living wage just working right out of their college (our high school, and maybe a bit of community college thrown in.) But that isn’t the case in the U.S. The implication is, if there’s no college degree, there’s no career. Is that a good approach? Surely not. There are tons of jobs, including white collar jobs that don’t benefit hardly at all from anything taught in college. You can start as a junior analyst in any investment bank without once falling back on anything you learned in a four-year college. So on this issue, we’re in agreement in principle, but maybe not in scale. But still, 20% is abysmally low especially when you also count vocation training. Other states do better. Unless you think Texas colleges are exceptionally difficult and the 80% attrition rate is due to people not being able to hack it, this is a clear sign that there’s something seriously wrong somewhere in Texas higher ed system. And that something probably isn’t “well too many kids attend those schools who should not.”
See, we agree alot more than you think. But, one thing I would like cleared up is how they define graduation rate. A study just came out showing an increase in H.S. graduation rates across the U.S.. Their definition is graduating with the class of freshman you came in with, i.e. 4 years. If it takes you five you graduate, but still count against the graduation rate. Hardly a fair assessment. IF, that is what is happening here, then this is hardly an important stat, because most college students are taking 5 years to graduate. Anyone know?