College Students Ill Prepaired for New Learning Or Life

More good information for the aspiring high school student that believe they are ready to tackle more intense subjects beyond  groping one another in the hall and thumbing a little keyboard.

I know most students that want to attend a university to prepare for finding a good job are not ready, and will never be ready to accept the discipline needed to succeed in college. The mental aptitude of the average student coming out of high school is changed, I believe, - the prevailing perception that exists now is 'not to worry about how the future will turn out, just grab hold of the line waiting for things to happen and then follow along'.

I can't imagine a junior sitting down with a councilor talking about how they should prepare for college and then actually doing it for two years. The environment that exists today for high school students is corrosive to mental achievement.

Most high school students, after four years of classes where fun and games is the standard of excellence, are not any where near ready to understand what it takes to actually succeed at higher learn levels - even more important, most have no idea of how to succeed at just living without someone holding their collective hands.

Pell Grants Fund Remedial Education with Poor Results
Source: Michael Petrilli, "Pell Grants Shouldn't Pay for Remedial College," Education Next, May 1, 2013.

May 10, 2013

The Federal Pell Grant Program awards a maximum of $5,550 to needy students. A large portion of the program's expenditures, which total about $40 billion, is flowing to people who simply aren't prepared to do college-level work, says Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

• Sixty-six percent of low-income community college students need remedial or development education.
• According to Complete College American, a nonprofit education group, 33 percent of students at four-year colleges need additional education just to get them to an acceptable level of college readiness.
• Sadly, less than 10 percent of students who start in remedial education graduate from community college within three years and just 35 percent of remedial students earn a four-year degree in six years.

Limiting the length of time during which low-income college students can receive Pell Grants would encourage low-income high schoolers with college ambitions to become more college-ready with the understanding that the government will not pay for college indefinitely.

• To do this, high schools need to offer more college-prep courses and make a greater effort to ensure their teachers are up to the task and their students are prepared.
• Better preparation could also include higher graduation standards, and including college matriculation and graduate rates in high school accountability systems.
• By reducing the stream of federal dollars to universities, colleges would become more selective in choosing only student who are properly prepared for college-level courses.

The downside to limiting Pell Grants is that those who cannot afford remedial education would likely never go to college. However, many of these students are unlikely to succeed in college, regardless of developmental education.

• Instead, many of these low-income students would be more successful in job-training programs that prepare them for jobs that will allow them to earn a decent living.
• The proposal to limit Pell Grants, if tested in one state, would likely improve the K-12 system, higher education and college completion rates.