This is the week when many of next year’s 2.3 million college freshmen will officially choose where to attend school next fall as a part of college signing day. It is an exciting and important moment in the lives of those students and their families. But only about 60 percent will ever earn their degrees, meaning nearly 1 million of today’s joyous families will soon likely feel like failures. We would never accept a graduation rate this low in America’s high schools, and we shouldn’t for America’s colleges and universities.
College graduation rates aren’t grabbing headlines. They aren’t as sexy as celebrities cheating and bribing to get their privileged kids into elite schools. They don’t sound as scary as massive student debt figuressetting off the alarms. But they should be.
