That is raising new questions about the wisdom of decades of public policy that focused on increasing access to higher learning but paid less attention to what happens once students arrive on campus. And some education experts have begun to argue that starting college — and going into debt to pay for it — without a clear plan for a diploma is a recipe for disaster.
“They have the economic burden of the debt but they do not get the benefit of higher income and higher levels of employment that one gets with a college degree,” said Jack Remondi, chief operating officer at Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private student lender. “Access and success are not linking up.”
The Obama administration says it is trying to address the issue by coupling its goal of ensuring that high school students are prepared for at least one year of higher education with new targets for college graduation rates.
The plight of “non-completers” has grown in magnitude as student debt tops $1 trillion, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In addition, the sputtering economy has forced a growing number of students to make difficult choices between the benefits of a degree and the burden of paying for it. More students are balancing their studies with full- or part-time jobs or signing up for a reduced course load to save money, increasing the likelihood that they will not graduate.
According to a 2009 study by Public Agenda, half of college dropouts said work was a major factor in their decision. Only a quarter said they had spent too much time socializing.
‘Money and time’
“In the end, it’s about money and time,” said Anthony Carne-vale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. “There’s almost a synergy between the two that will knock you out of school.”
The cost to the economy is roughly half a trillion dollars, he said. Although college dropouts make more than those with only a high school diploma, he said they earn about a million dollars less than college graduates over their careers.
Malainie Smith spent a year at a small liberal-arts college in Massachusetts before deciding to go to nursing school. She was halfway through her program at Simmons College in Boston when she took what she thought would be a break of one semester. When she tried to return, she found she could no longer get a loan.
Smith said that left her in a Catch-22 situation. She had to quit school but still owed about $100,000 to the Vermont Student Assistance Corp. (VSAC), a public nonprofit student lender. Her monthly payments are about $400. Three years after she left Simmons, she is now a waitress — a recent promotion from her position as a hostess.
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