Student Prepration for Higher Education Lacking : Real World Statistics Scary

I believe one of the most basic problems that exists to ensure failure of high school students as well as college students and that's the prevailing culture of complacency, nothing is taken as serious or profound. If a situation can't be digested by lighting up the 3X5 screen on ones smart phone then it is on consequence. 

Also that a majority of high school student shouldn't go to a higher learning institution is shown in these figures with the huge drop-out rate. It's entirely that they are stupid but they don't have any idea what they want or how they are. Worse they have no idea what is demanded of them once they reach the real world of earning a living by hard work.

The fantasy world shrinks dramatically once the smart phone is no longer the center of ones life. The former student has to focus on a world unrelated to someone on the other end of an electronic single, they will have to focus on someone standing right in front of them. Now, of course, the former student has no idea of what to do next as most aren't prepared for personal contact when their thumbs have been taken out of the equation.

If the high school student that believes they have to attend college to be some body or to advance their knowledge, then their preparations have to include life with out the smart phone for awhile. Teachers must explain in detail what actually goes on out in the real world, where if you fall asleep, like you do in class, failure will be waiting for you along with poverty.

New Ideas About Remedial Courses
Source: Angela Boatman, "Beyond Ready, Fire, Aim: New Solutions to Old Problems in College Remediation," American Enterprise Institute, March 25, 2014.
April 4, 2014

Schools are making efforts to deal with the problem of meager college completion rates, say Angela Boatman, an assistant professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University.
College completion rates in the United States are poor.

• Of students enrolling in four-year colleges, less than 60 percent graduate within six years.
• Only 30 percent of students seeking an associate's degree, enrolled full time in a community college, receive the degree within three years.
• Estimates indicate that only one third of students graduating from high schools are minimally academically prepared for college.

Traditionally, schools used "developmental courses" to fill the college readiness gap (classes targeted at underprepared students), but these remedial classes are expensive and have not necessarily been successful.

Recently, high schools have responded to this issue with a variety of approaches to identify academic needs, and colleges have developed strategies to shorten degree time and help students advance more efficiently through the system. For example:

• The Khan Academy provides free instructional videos on a wide variety of topics from history to computer programming. These are available to students online for free.
• Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have emerged.
• Some colleges have been able to eliminate traditional lectures and replace them with computer lab courses that deliver content online.

But it is unclear whether these efforts are going to be effective, and reformers need to be sure that they are actually targeting the right problems.

• It can be difficult to measure how effective remedial interventions are. Measuring the outcomes of remedial students with those that did not take remedial courses does not show whether or not outcome differences were caused by the enrollment.
• Better data across different student groups would help reformers to see how different student populations are responding to developmental education.
• Technology creates a lot of opportunities, but also challenges -- not just the cost of equipment and maintenance, but online courses raise concerns with academic integrity.

Centralized policies are not always helpful and institutions should consider opportunities for reform within specific departments or colleges, rather than focusing on a reform agenda that spans the entire higher education system.