An educational system built for another time, another student demographic

Complete College America has just released a very interesting and important report entitled Time is the Enemy: the surprising truth about why today's college students aren't graduating- and what needs to change. The report moves beyond typical IPEDS information that focuses on full time students who enter as freshmen, thus ignoring part time and transfer students. Thirty three states provided information on their public systems that went into this report. A couple of caveats: The data do not track educational pathways of individual students (as is now available in a few instances), but rather use gross data such as entries, graduations, drop-outs, transfers from one part of a state's public system into another part of the same system. Thus, for example, transfers to private (either non- or for-profit) institutions and public systems in another states are not included. In addition, the labels "full" and "part-time" student are defined by the status of the student in the first term of enrollment, which may or may not be descriptive of the way many of today's students follow their education.These and other similar caveats aside, this report provides an excellent first look at a much larger and broader set of students than are described by IPEDS.

The report contains two striking demographic facts that underline problems in the way that we typically view higher education:

• 40% of public college students are able to attend only part time
• only 25% of college students are "traditional" in the sense that they are attending full time, attending a residential college, and have parents that are are paying most of their bills