American college students, particularly male students, have been slower and slower to finish college over the past 30 years. A new working paper by John Bound, Michael F. Lovenheim, and Sarah Turner suggests the trend is due to rising costs of education. Demographics and academic preparedness don’t explain the trend, but the authors found?evidence in support of the increasing cost hypothesis: both increasing student-faculty ratios and cohort size are linked to increasing time-to-degree, particularly in “non-top 50 public sector” schools. The authors also found that students are working more hours in response to rising costs. Low-income students and students at less-selective institutions are particularly vulnerable to the trend. (HT: Chris Blattman)[%comments]
Why Does College Take so Long These Days?
TAGS: Education
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Makes sense. If these students, who have less financial support at home, are working to pay their way through school, and no one in the school is particularly connected to them, then the loss of a job or an unexpected expense (such as a car repair on the vehicle that gets the student to work or school) may mean the choice between paying rent or continuing one’s education. It may or may not be a reflection on the quality of the individual student, aside from the fact that wealthier kids tend to do better in school.
I think one of the key factors is the size of the institution–where you might be a serial number and a tuition check at a large school, my professors knew not only my name, but my career ambitions, my internship responsibilities, my on-campus job–it would be beneficial if larger institutions could replicate some part of this, where at least someone would email you and ask why you hadn’t been attending class.
At the college I attended (Mount Holyoke) there is a class of students called Frances Perkins Scholars, who are students age 24 and older, and in getting to know them, it became clear that there are many, many reasons that intelligent and motivated young people may be forced to leave school or interrupt their education.
From the student side I noticed that working several part-time jobs every semester to pay off out-of-state tuition tended to significantly slow down my academic progress. From the teaching side I noticed that there are a significant number of people who are just slow (party to much, don’t know what they are really doing in college, etc.) to getting around to graduating. However, when I take the time to get to know my students I find out that many of them are struggling to work crappy hours to pay off student tuition and expenses. Those with spouse or kids are also SOL when it comes to graduating anytime soon. Academia is very slow in realizing the growing demands of an increasing population of “non-traditional” students.
There are several reasons I can think of, but hard perhaps to measure with econometric means. For one thing, the publics out of the top 50 attract what are, in many cases, lesser students. I know you’re not supposed to say that… Couple that with the fact that until the 1960′s there were more jobs for college grads than there were college graduates, which is no longer true (not by a longshot!) That means that kids that 40+ years ago could expect to walk into some white-collar job just by virtue of having a piece of paper now face increasing competition for that job. So students drift for a few years in college, especially at the large publics where you get no attention from faculty, no guidance, and you’re surrounded by peers that are not the cream of the crop. Without any direction or guidance it probably takes a few years to figure out that you need to have some marketable skills; a History major from Harvard will get interviews, a History major from Long Beach State will flip fries.
As for rising costs and students working more, this tells nothing about causality. When expenses go up it is obvious to most outside the ivory tower that people will work longer in response to pay the bills. But this association can happen even if other factors (not measured) are causing the time to degree to increase.
@Jacob H
What if video games are conducive to learning? Perhaps more time spent solving physics puzzles in Half Life 2 and less time doing the sort of maths mathematician Paul Lockhart laments would improve students’ academic standards?
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
— why mathematics is the purest form of art.
Given that it takes longer for a student to become a full-fledged working member of society, don’t we lose out on some valuable productivity while said student is flipping burgers to pay for his next semester? Wouldn’t that be a good reason for the government to step in and subsidize some more of our education?
It’s probably a combination of factors. When I went to college in the 80s, I noticed that kids (like me) who had to pay their own tuition and expenses tended to graduate as soon as possible. Kids who had their parents footing the bill were more likely to take their time to graduate.
With the (ridiculous!) rise in college expenses, there are probably two trends. One: more parents realize there’s no way their kid can pay for college, and are footing the bill. Therefore, there are more kids farting around instead of putting their nose to the grindstone. Two: kids who have to pay their own way have to work longer hours to defray the costs. These kids, no matter how motivated, will take longer to graduate than they would have if costs were reasonable.
Are there any studies about who pays for college, parents, scholarships, loans, working students? They would be interesting to see.
Thanks to the credentialism treadmill, more people who shouldn’t really be in college “have” to go through to get the jobs they want. That means the average cognitive level of the college-goer must have fallen.
Friends report to me that they are unable to complete their degree in four years because of the inavailability of classes they are required to take. When all the sections of a class that is a graduation prerequisite for you are full when you are admitted to class registration for the following semester, what can you do? One friend even suggested that this was an intnetional revenue-generator for some colleges; you just need to pay tuition for an extra semester or two before they bless your diploma.