
Who Gets to Graduate? - jervisfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html
======
incision
For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article:

 _' The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to
depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her
parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-
class kids don’t.'_

\---

 _' But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-
set messages did significantly better: 86 percent of them had completed 12
credits or more by Christmas. They had cut the gap between themselves and the
advantaged students in half.'_

Basically, straightforward encouragement and promotion of a sense of belonging
has a significant effect toward equalizing the health, academic performance
and graduation rates of economically disadvantaged kids of the same aptitude
as wealthier peers.

~~~
js2
This is a bummer:

 _Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so
supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really
qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe
you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you
to a junior college first.”_

After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I just
can't fathom a parent ever saying this to their child regardless of wealth or
education. Why does her supportive mother suddenly undermine her at such a
critical juncture?

Would the poor kids do better if only their parents consistently expected them
to?

~~~
x0x0
Her mother was right. Maybe weak students should -- like in CA -- go to a two
year college that is a stepping stone between high school and college, with
more oversight and structure; finish their gen eds; and transfer. The diploma
says the same thing after 4 years.

And to be clear, it's not like Vanessa is a good student. fta:

    
    
       a month into the school year, Vanessa stumbled. She failed her first test in 
       statistics, a prerequisite for admission to the nursing program. She was 
       surprised at how bad it felt. Failure was not an experience she was used to. 
       At Mesquite High, she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all 
       without really trying. (Her senior-year G.P.A. was 3.50, placing her 39th 
       out of 559 students in her graduating class. She got a 22 on the ACT, the 
       equivalent of about a 1,030 on the SAT — not stellar, but above average.)
    

So basically, she only got a 3.5 in hs, and never learned math particularly
well. It's not exactly a surprise she struggles at a good university.

~~~
mikehearn
In her class, she was 39th out of 559. She was in the 93rd percentile of the
only group she could compare herself to. Prior to college, I would say she was
a phenomenal student compared to her peers.

The point of the article is that low-income kids, despite being intelligent
and doing well among their peers, have a hard time transitioning to college.
Universities could wash their hands of the problem and just reject the poor
kids and send them to two-year universities like you suggest, but they’re
trying to solve the inequality without further exacerbating our income
differences.

~~~
hueving
>I would say she was a phenomenal student compared to her peers.

Top 7 percent in a group that small isn't "phenomenal" by the normal
definition of the word.

------
tlb
This is interesting because it shows a specific mechanism by which smart kids
of non-college-educated parents drop out. She failed a test in her first month
in college, and her mother told her maybe she wasn't meant to be there. I
vaguely remember failing a test early in college too, but it never would have
occurred to my (intelligentsia-class) parents that I wasn't meant to be
educated. I can only imagine how discouraging that feels.

~~~
reubenmorais
Her mom's doubt certainly makes things worse, but I think the mechanism in
motion in this case is best described by Eric Raymond's "Curse of the Gifted"
[0]. She's smart, intuitive, and hadn't had any trouble in academia before.
When things get really complicated in college, everything collapses, and it
takes _a lot_ of effort and support to get back on your feet. Having college
educated parents helps with the support part, but it doesn't prevent you from
collapsing in the first place.

[0]
[http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20...](http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20Of%20The%20Gifted.html)

~~~
thaumasiotes
Quick fact check: she's not smart. She's smart only in comparison to the rest
of her high school, and the article points out she was admitted under UT's
affirmative action program, wherein (for Austin) if you outperform 93% of your
high school classmates, they let you in. But the article also points out that
she scored the equivalent of a 1030 on the SAT. She's barely above average for
the ACT-taking population of Texas as a whole (she scored 22 vs a state
average of 21).

~~~
judk
Define "smart".

The ACT is taken by college aspiring high schoolers.

If 22 is top 10% of her whole school, she had some sort of personal cleverness
to overcome her near-completely unintellectual community.

~~~
streptomycin
She's not "smart" relative to her classmates.

[http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/whyut/profile/scores](http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/whyut/profile/scores)

Average ACT is 28. 25th percentile is 25. She got a 22.

~~~
judk
This comparison is to the wrong cohort. She was among the top of her high
school cohort. That's the point -- among a pool of people in the community he
was raised in, she rose above the pack, didn't come through a culture the
tests are optimized to select for.

------
cperciva
_The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend
today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents
make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class
kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college
freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to
collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, while almost 90 percent of freshmen
born into families in the top income quartile will go on to finish their
degree._

I find this very interesting in light of studies I've seen in Canada and
Europe: Those studies all found that parental _income_ was irrelevant after
regressing for the overwhelming effect of parental _education_. Poor kids of
well-educated parents were far more likely to graduate than rich kids of
uneducated parents.

Of course, this would reinforce the story being told even more: Parents with
college degrees encourage and expect their progeny to attend and graduate from
college, while parents without that higher education do not provide an
analogous proof of possibility.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I find this very interesting in light of studies I've seen in Canada and
> Europe: Those studies all found that parental income was irrelevant after
> regressing for the overwhelming effect of parental education.

All past US studies I've seen have shown the same thing, or at least that
parental educational attainment is a better predictor of a persons educational
attainment than any other factor, including parental income.

> Of course, this would reinforce the story being told even more: Parents with
> college degrees encourage and expect their progeny to attend and graduate
> from college, while parents without that higher education do not provide an
> analogous proof of possibility.

Or: a lot of the education necessary to success in formal education happens
outside of its bounds in less-formal interactions, including, especially,
those in the home.

~~~
watwut
It is also about opinions on college utility. Do parents think college is a
waste of time? If parents think it is waste of time, you are more likely to
think the same and drop out.

~~~
dragonwriter
I think that's part of it, but I think its also about the ability to actually
have an informed discussion about what college is and isn't, about what you
need to do to be ready for college, and about dealing with problems that arise
while in college.

Parents having actual directly relevant experience seems intuitively to be
quite likely to have value there.

------
kosei
Not to divert from the main point of the article, but this is frightening:

 _More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges
haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college
students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any
other country except Hungary._

It is astonishing that 2/5 of American students can be saddled with huge debts
without having generated the means to repay that debt (increased wages through
a college degree).

~~~
Balgair
Mind that '4 year college' includes a lot of places that are outside of what
you may be thinking of. U. of Phoenix is an example that is very predatory in
their loans. Also, many bible and other religious colleges may be included and
there are a lot more of those that you'd think. The reasons for dropping out
are also complicated: Having a baby, family health problems, personal health
issues, mental health, debt from other sources, plain not wanting to continue
anymore, drinking or smoking in the dorms, getting engaged (at BYU they say
'ring by spring or your money back') , etc. As with any population, there are
a lot of circumstances. Still, I agree with you, the debt incurred here is
unsustainable, especially as employers see a degree as a basic test for
employment more so.

------
ericclemmons
What's interesting is that I had a very similar experience as a white male
(first to go to college out of my siblings/family), and got a 0.4 the first
semester.

Things seemed easy in high school, so I thought I knew what I was doing, until
I realized that University is serious business academically.

With friends failing out right and left, I forced myself to attend paid
tutoring sessions (worth it) and meet others who had study groups.

In the end, it worked out after years of making up for that one mistaken
semester, but I had to buckle down on my own because of the fear of telling my
parents how bad I performed...

~~~
psbp
Universities should weigh the first semester less and cap the number of hours
taken. I know plenty of people who fucked up their first semester due to
culture shock/feelings of isolation.

~~~
gte910h
MIT has pass fail for the first term.
[http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/first_term_freshman_yea...](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/first_term_freshman_year)

------
roymurdock
Vanessa averaged A's in high school but tested a 22 on the ACT: she was the
top of her class, but her class was very far behind the students in the rest
of the country. Her high school was clearly ineffective and set her up for
failure on her first test. Good for her for sticking with it and working
through/around/with a terribly unequal system that disadvantaged her from the
start.

Perhaps instead of an SAT or an ACT, there should be a test where different
colleges contribute questions that are representative of intro level classes
at the school. Questions would progress from relatively easy (large state
school questions) to more complex, esoteric questions that would show up for
the more selective, private school caliber students.

This would overcome an important informational friction: high school students
don't see college-level test questions until they're enrolled and sitting in
class, with the test in front of them. If you are going to make a $200k
investment, you should have as much information as possible about your chances
of success before signing on the dotted line.

~~~
codingdave
Wow, did you really just say that state schools are easy, while private school
are complex, and then use the phrase "private school caliber students" to
punctuate that judgment?

I went to a private college. I am not better than my friends who went to state
schools.

~~~
ccernaf
It's not even that any person is better than another... Classes at elite
public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UMich, etc. are more demanding than at any
but a few private colleges.

~~~
eitally
And it isn't really fair to paint with even this broad a brush. The fact is
that large public universities generally have a broader charter than small,
elite private schools. This is a factor of how they're governed on the one
hand (things like mandating x% of students are admitted from in-state, or
enforcing affirmative action), and the fact that they [usually] have to
provide a reasonably comprehensive set of study options on the other. I went
to an "elite" state school and studied history & comparative religion. My wife
went to a small private women's college (~750 students) and studied biology.
The resources available at my uni, which has a $2b/yr operating budget, were
orders of magnitude better than hers, but the education I received was far
less personal and -- again speaking in generalities -- not as good as what she
received with the small class sizes and personal tutelage from her professors.

~~~
hueving
> not as good as what she received

Sounds more like a reflection of the difference in studied topics.

------
digita88
It's interesting because my younger brother and I fared very differently. He
had a very low score after high school (I think it was the second lowest score
one could get) and never graduated college (despite being accepted for an
online degree which he then dropped out). I had a high score in high school,
graduated from college (and picked up awards along the way), got accepted in
two masters (one of which I dropped out to pursue another masters). We were
two years apart and in fact my family gained more income by the time I started
college. However I sympathise with this article because not only did I moved
cities and am a minority but also because I too failed some subjects in my
first year. All you need is perseverance and support.

------
ykumar6
Uh oh..

"But here’s the key — none of them know that they’re in the bottom quartile.”
The first rule of the Dashboard, in other words, is that you never talk about
the Dashboard."

~~~
205guy
I was also wondering if it was responsible of those involved to be talking to
the press about their work, even before they said this. They run the risk of
counteracting their effects if the students think it is a gimmick. Also,
students not selected for extra help could turn against them, as so many have
against affirmative action in general.

------
com2kid
A lot of junior colleges offer more personal instructional programs and are
geared more towards helping out first time students. The more interpersonal
relationship between professors and students are community colleges seems like
an overall better way to transition students from high school to university.
Not to mention they are far more efficient to run!

Surely one potential solution would be to remove the social stigma of
attending a community college? I am proud that I went to a CC with professors
that cared about their students, class sizes in the 20s, and office hours that
extended throughout the day.

I had brilliant professors across multiple subjects, the common thread running
throughout my entire community college experience was that each and every
professor who worked there was there because they loved to teach and spread
their joy of their field to students.

The other obvious issue is poor study skills taught in HS. I tell students in
HS that if they get one thing out of HS, which is otherwise a large waste of
time, it should be to learn how to study.

~~~
RegEx
One thing I didn't realize until it was too late was that attending community
college first forfeits an extremely large amount of potential scholarship
money. Transfer scholarships pale in comparison to freshman 4-year
scholarships.

~~~
judk
That means you should apply for scholarships first yes, then go to CC if the
financials don't come through.

------
mballantyne
An academic paper summarizing studies on the effect of attitude interventions
like those discussed in the OP:

[https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/REVIEW-OF-
EDUC...](https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/REVIEW-OF-EDUCATIONAL-
RESEARCH-2011-Yeager-267-301.pdf)

Positive feelings of belonging and capability seem to be a surprisingly
powerful form of race and class based privilege.

~~~
205guy
It's not just "like" the OP, that IS the academic paper by the psychology
professor in the article about the work mentioned in the article.

------
nshepperd
> It may seem counterintuitive, but the more selective the college you choose,
> the higher your likelihood of graduating.

I hope they controlled for the admission criteria here. Otherwise, the obvious
reason to see a correlation like this is that more selective colleges _select_
students who are better at studying for tests (and therefore more likely to
graduate).

~~~
gwern
There's also the signaling theory of higher education: the point of selective
colleges is to show that you could get into them; the actual classes don't
matter, so they might as well let everyone graduate and with honors (eg
Harvard).

------
marcell
For an in-depth description of the qualitative disadvantages in education, I
recommend reading "Live on the Boundary": [http://www.amazon.com/Lives-
Boundary-Achievements-Educationa...](http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Boundary-
Achievements-Educationally-Underprepared/dp/0143035460/)

------
frozenport
Speaks to the failure of affirmative action. She should not have gotten into
this school, but instead went to an easier one where she would have passed the
exam. Imagine how bad the second pick students are?

~~~
ihnorton
From the article:

> It may seem counterintuitive, but the more selective the college you choose,
> the higher your likelihood of graduating.

Selective colleges have the resources to give focused attention to people who
_can_ (demonstrably) do the work, but lack the necessary habits and structural
support.

~~~
frozenport
Yes, but they were clearly wrong...

------
glifchits

      The distribution of grades ... didn’t follow the nice sweeping bell curve you 
      might expect. Instead, they fell into what he calls a “bimodal distribution.”

~~~
glifchits
I guess I should have added context. I thought it was funny that it sounded
like the author thought that "bimodal distribution" was coined by the
chemistry prof.

------
jmz92
I'm curious: how would the achievement gap change if all or most post-
secondary education was delivered online instead of at physical
colleges/universities?

~~~
jacalata
I know someone who teaches at a community college and she said that student
groups who normally do poorly in regular classes do even worse in online
courses. Random paper here seems to agree with that:
[http://www.ashe.ws/images/Gross%20and%20Kleinman%20-%20Need%...](http://www.ashe.ws/images/Gross%20and%20Kleinman%20-%20Need%20for%20Speed.pdf)

------
millermp12
a) has this study been reproduced (i.e. the Dashboard business)

b) still smells like Lysenko-ism

~~~
gwern
> a) has this study been reproduced (i.e. the Dashboard business)

Nope. Did you notice the part of the article where they declared victory and
extended the program to all students?

> A rise of four percentage points might not seem like much of a revolution.
> And Yeager and Walton are certainly not declaring victory yet. But if the
> effect of the intervention persists over the next three years (as it did in
> the elite-college study), it could mean hundreds of first-generation
> students graduating from U.T. in 2016 who otherwise wouldn’t have graduated
> on time, if ever. It would go a long way toward helping David Laude meet his
> goals. And all from a one-time intervention that took 45 minutes to
> complete. The U.T. administration was encouraged; beginning this month, the
> “U.T. Mindset” intervention will be part of the pre-orientation for all
> 7,200 members of the incoming class of 2018.

How nice of them. Besides helping out the student body, this also spares them
the risk of having to falsify a cherished idea.

------
donjuanica
TL;DR

------
pnt12
I didn't read the whole article, but from the introduction, it seemed she
failed the test because she wasn't used to studying hard in high school.
Richer students do have more resources but I can't figure why money was a
relevant factor in this case.

~~~
jotux
I heard a good article on NPR a while back (that I can't find now) that talked
about the difference between rich and poor college students. A big factor that
helped students from affluent homes is the fact that their college-graduate
parents were familiar with college campus services and how to navigate them.
So when their children failed tests and called home upset they would tell them
to go to a tutoring center, or encourage them to go to office hours and ask
for help. Students from poor homes, with parents that never went to college,
didn't understand the resources available to them and were more likely to drop
out because of that. If anyone can find a link to the article, it would be
appreciated.

------
neil1
It's strange that this article just hit the front page of HN, when it was
written 20 days ago.

------
thaumasiotes
further reading on getting dramatically underqualified students to graduate
anyway:
[http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm](http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm)

At some point, you wonder: what if we gave the same level of support to the
qualified students?

~~~
ForHackernews
That site looks like some really dubious ~~white supremacist~~ "race realist"
propaganda page.

Some headlines from the homepage:

> Crime and the Hispanic Effect

> Diversity and Excellence: Are They Compatible?

> The Color of Death Row

> Affirmative Action: The Robin Hood Effect.

Edit, also:
[http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.music.classi...](http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.music.classical.guitar/2008-06/msg00072.html)

"I had never before heard of La Griffe du Lion. His article was so full of
egregiously bad methodology and other mistakes that I at first assumed it was
a satire of racist pseudoscience, the sort of thing that might be written for
the Annals of Improbable Research or (if you're Alan Sokal) Social Text."

~~~
thaumasiotes
and you think this makes the description of an intensive support program for
low-performing students inaccurate because...?

~~~
ForHackernews
Garbage in, garbage out.

I don't trust that site's analysis, and I don't trust them to accurately
report the underlying data without cherry-picking or selecting dubious
studies.

Given your comment history, you seem like somebody with an ideological axe to
grind on the subject of racial and gender diversity, and I don't believe you
selected this article from such an obscure source solely for its topicality.

