Staying in School

Why are students dropping out? When students drop out of school, the course of their lives may be totally reset. Dropouts typically earn less than their peers with more education, and they are more likely than high school graduates to end up in prison. Just 56 percent of students who start a bachelor's degree program finish within six years, according to a 2011 Harvard study titled “Pathways To Prosperity” and just 29 percent of those who seek an associate's degree obtain it within three years. Research shows two sets of factors may be predictors of whether students will drop out or graduate from college: One factor is associated with the institutional characteristics of their families. Changes in family structure, along with other potentially stressful events (such as a family moves, illness, death, adults entering and leaving the households, and marital disruptions) increase the odds of dropping out. Homesickness also has a factor to play in a student dropping out. The comforts of home always seem to be desirable when a lonely and discouraged student is away at college. Whether it is an abandoned relationship back at home or the coziness of a childhood bedroom or even the climate, some students can become so overwhelmed with grief, they cannot continue in their studies and dropout.
Why is Americas dropout rate is so bad? The cost of schooling is one of the reasons. A recent study by “Pew Research Center” shows that two thirds of young Americans dropped out of school because they had to stop schooling to support a family, while forty eight percent said they just couldn’t afford it some of the costs of dropping out Dropouts suffer from reduced earnings and lost opportunities. About two-thirds of all college students borrow money too obtain a bachelor's degree, according to a survey of graduates by the Department of Education. Of those, the average debt in two thousand eleven was twenty three thousand three hundred with ten percent owing more than fifty four thousand and three percent more than one hundred thousand the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported. The tuition costs vary, but averaged twenty one thousand during the two thousand eleven two thousand twelve-school years at public colleges, while private colleges charged an average of forty two thousand.
The balance of a social life and academics is somewhat difficult for a college student. The problem is too much of one destroys the other. The natural inclination, of course, is friends and pleasure. Drinking, staying up late, blowing off classes to the point where the student is too far behind to make up for the slack can lead to expulsion, rescinding of the parent money flow and a decision from the student themselves to discontinue college. Broken Relationships can cause a student to drop out as well. Finding love at college is very common, but when love turns into loathing and heartbreak, it can easily take the student away from academics. The awkward passer-by on campus, the shared classes, the same grouping of friends, the hurtful memories will usually cause one of the two to drop out.
Some students drop out because they do not have the same support system that they did in high school these students could be retained if colleges instituted more aggressive “welcome programs” and advised students of all the resources on campus. This support should continue throughout his or her college career and a concerned professor, faculty mentor, or guidance counselor should be always accessible. As well as not having a support system some students aren’t equipped by their high schools to do college level work. As a result, they drop out after a semester or two of profound struggles and academic probation. This is a hard issue for colleges to deal with, as they can only manage what they are given. Colleges shouldn’t be expected to teach students what they should have learned in high school, but they can acknowledge students’ troubles by offering more remedial classes, extra help programs and other tools that can help students catch up and succeed. In addition, universities can make sure that they hold firm to their admissions standards in order to keep chronically underperforming students out of the system.