I've been working on a "contrarian" paper for how to select a college--for a guest post on emergingtiro.com--recognizing all the while that as a result of the banking industry and our tendency to think about value in terms of money, my perspective is going to have tough sledding. I decided, without research, that whether or not a kid finishes college is tied more to family values than money.
Along comes David Brooks who reframes my notion, far better. Here's what he has to say:
I’ve had this discussion with my liberal friends a thousand times, and I have come to accept that they will never wrap their minds around the truth: lack of student aid is not the major reason students drop out of college. They drop out because they are academically unprepared or emotionally disengaged or because they lack self-discipline or because bad things are happening at home.
I checked out Brooks' idea with a liberal friend and he's quite correct. Not that a sample of one proves much, but she couldn't get her mind around his notion.
I have a lot invested in this. I dropped out, or was it "kicked out," after my first year of college. It was, clearly, lack of self-discipline and bad things at home, so it took a few years to get my "stuff" together. (You'll notice from my bio that I got it together.)
I'm wondering. Why do you think students drop out of college?