On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:09:57 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: >The U.S is 12th in graduation rates and only 40% of collegians >complete college. Would like to find out how many students who >declare psychology as their major fail to graduate? And how do >we compare with other majors?
I assume that Prof. Sylvester got the "12th in graduation rate" statistic from some popular media outlet. Since news.google.com allows one to search numerous news sources one might find something like the following article in the Christian Science Monitor (CSM): http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0809/Obama-aims-to-lift-college-graduation-rates-but-his-tools-are-few However, as they say, the devil is in the details. Quoting from the article: |The US led the world in college graduation rates before falling |off about a decade ago. That is still evident in the education levels |of America’s oldest working citizens: According to a College Board |report, 38.5 percent of Americans age 55 to 64 have at least an |associate’s degree, ranking fourth in a survey of 36 developed nations. Just a couple of notes regarding the above: (1) A college degree is defined as an Associate's degree or above. (2) One has to be careful about which age group one is referring to because as mentioned above Americans aged 55 to 64 ranked 4th in percetage with at least an asociate's degree among comparably aged citizen of 36 nations. (3) If things were so much better back in the day, why does only 38.5% have an associate's degree of higher? Quoting more from the article: |Other countries have now surpassed the US among the newest crop |of workers. Among today’s American 25- to 34-year olds, slightly |more than 40 percent have associate’s degrees or higher, a tad higher |than for their parents’ generation. But that rate places the US only 12th |of the 36 countries in the College Board study. Note: Today we have more people graduating with at least an associate's degree than before. However, other countries has increased their graduation rates. For one source on the top 6 nations, see: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0809/Countries-with-the-highest-college-graduation-rates/Canada-55.8-percent A word to Canadians: don't hurt yourself while patting yourself on the back. The CSM article provides somewhat more info about the graduation rate problem but leaves out other information, such as the number of people who have been attending college has been increasing steady since 1970. For a detailed report on this, see: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2010/pdf/7_2010.pdf See Figure 1 and the tables. So, more people have been going to college in the U.S. and it projected that this number will increase at least until 2019. But if the number of people attending college is increasing, why isn't the graduation rate also increasing? That is a question with no simple answer. One source for background on this is (though it only focuses on 4 year instituions): http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007161 As for whether graduation rate varies as a function of major, I presume that the College Board or some has statistics on this point. This newspaper article provides a table for graduation rates in Texas (apropos the President's visit and speech about graduation rates at a UT-Austin (which has a 51% graduation rate at 4 years; Rice wins with 83%); see: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/081010dntexobamaedu.2a28800.html Perhaps Prof. Sylvester can search the internet for info on graduation rates by college major and provide it to us. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=4118 or send a blank email to leave-4118-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
