Low Graduation Rates: Not From Slackers

College, I love it. And so does Eduardo Porter. Just kidding, it’s a mess.

            The article opens by talking about colleges (bleh) and the price, supply, and availability of them. Right now in America, we have slow graduation rates for college. Slow-building rates that just aren’t impressive enough. We like to root these low rates to affordability, and financial aid factors. Porter raises a new factor in the equation however: Is there enough “college” to go around?

            It’s referenced as supply. And that term is very generally applied for a reason, it encompasses many areas of that definition: the supply of actual institutions, the supply of classes and majors, the supply of teachers. We like to talk about financial and student success as issues for the lack of college completion, and that rates would go up for graduation naturally because colleges desire to meet those needs.

Porter disagrees, there is a lack of interest in colleges to create more opportunities for higher education. From the article:

“John Bound of the University of Michigan and Sarah Turner at the University of Virginia tracked college education through the second half of the 20th century. They found that when states had a large college-age population, public spending per student declined and graduation rates suffered.”

So there is a concern here, that part of the problem with lack of graduation is the lack of colleges to graduate from. As well as lack of actual institutions, there is a lack of space in the institutions available for students who are accepted. So as well as occupying ourselves with solutions for mandatory education, there are some things that need to be addressed with higher education and it’s increasing rates of unreliability.

Article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/why-college-supply-matters/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Business%20Day&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

Title: Why College Supply Matters

Author: Eduardo Porter