We often read and hear about academic struggles at colleges, it becomes a rude awakening for most, even many who did well in their high schools. It takes students extra years to graduate yet they can’t maintain good GPA. A significant percentage drops out.
What is the reason? Is it vast difference of rigor between school and college, low academic standards at schools, wrong choice of college, wrong subjects, personal lack of academic skills or lack of academic support at colleges? Is it something else?
It is all of the above plus for some students their secondary school success required their parents and teachers looking over their shoulder and pushing them to do the work. That is lacking in college. They did not learn time management. Some go off the deep end partying. Some colleges even give out F’s if a student fails the class!!! That rarely happens in many high schools where everyone is above average. (Garrison Keillor)
When someone is accepted to a college with stats in the bottom 25% of accepted students they are overjoyed here on CC. I wonder how they do at that college.
All of the above from reply #1, plus students under financial stress may be juggling a large number of work hours to earn money to pay for school.
Also, college courses are harder than high school courses in general. Where there is overlapping content (e.g. AP courses, foreign language courses), college courses often cover in a semester what a high school course covers in a year.
College grades are generally 60% midterm & Final, and 40% everything else (smaller papers, participation, other tests). From what I’ve seen, Freshman that flunk a course (or do poorly) get behind early on, new found freedom and no helicopter parenting to remind them to go to class and do homework. Its hard to come back from an F on the mid-term. Everything is riding on the final, and they may be too far behind to do well enough to counteract the bad midterm.
Time management is probably the biggest culprit. Parents are so overbearing in high school - managing all activities and study time/bed time that the new found freedom produces poor results.
@CupCakeMuffins, are you concerned about yourself or your child?
In answer to your post: for some students, it’s the first time away from homes, life-long friends, and support systems.
Being away from home requires immediate self support with time management skills required for chores: keeping room clean, washing clothes, light shopping-for grooming and snack-supplies, money management, and transportation. Socially, their supportive families and friends aren’t on campus. These issues impact study time and class time, so a student to has to learn to navigate and manage their personal needs with their studies.
I’ve noticed that many of your posts don’t appear to ask for personal information (and are often inaccurate) but appear to be posted to generate a discussion. If this is helpful for your needs, then great, but I think you could google a lot of your questions/statements for information.
Fortunately, not my problem. My kids were prepared well by their intensely rigorous and insanely competitive school. They actually found colleges easily manageable after four rough n tough years of high school.
It’s not hypothetical, I see many parents worried about this issue and I myself was anxious during their first year after hearing and reading about the struggles. If a question can gather good tips for next lot and their parents then why not? It should also help me when youngest one goes through the process.
I think the factor noted above, of parents pushing in high school and no longer there to do it, is certainly one factor.
I do think high school prep is another. My daughter’s high school (a public, non grade inflation one) is “notorious” for its graduates finding college easier than school - and this includes those going on to ivies and other T20 schools. Certainly, my daughter who is at a T30 is finding this true as well. She’s performing better grades-wise with less work than in high school.
I agree that a lot of it is preparation. My D had 4-6 hours homework/nightly through HS (and more on weekends). She was used to having to be very scheduled and diligent to get everything done. Those skills transferred over to college.
It can also be a shock for students in very competitive programs where everyone around them was also the top of their HS class. Not everyone is going to get As, especially in intro classes where things are graded on a curve.
My observation would be that many of my “struggling” students do so because they are woefully unprepared. I have had students who appeared to be functionally illiterate, students with the math skills of 1st graders, students who could barely write a sentence. I can’t fix those things. Many of them come from places where not only are there not parents pushing them, but there are barely parents at all.
Another common issue is the level of “expectation” in the student. Many students come into a course expecting the instructor to feed them everything they need, with no effort on their part aside from lounging back in class and watching the professor make it look easy. When they can’t do it themselves (because not so easy), they blame the faculty rather than their own attitudes.
Each college student is different, so there’s always different reason why they struggle. I work with college students around the country to provide support and help them when they’re not ready for college. I’d say the 2 most common contributors are: 1) challenges with self-regulation and the many ways this manifests (inability to start work, get to the library, work early or long enough, social issues, etc.) and 2) not knowing what it takes to succeed in college…mostly because high schools cater to students but once they get to college it’s mostly lectures, notes, textbooks, papers, and tests.
First let me say I think time management and being on their own for the first time plays the biggest role in whether a student goes off the rails in college. Another aspect which has been touched on some in this thread is test taking ability. In HS there are plenty of chances to get easy points like homework and another assignments. There are less of those in college. You end up relying on more on your general ability to take tests and show you know material.
I think some kids just don’t test well. I know there is evidence that ACT/SAT results don’t predict success in college perfectly. But being able to take tests well has to be a factor in doing well in college.
A lot of what is above and maybe also because mom/dad aren’t there to micromanage their every move?
And I have read a couple of remorseful posts on CC where the parents did so much all thru HS to get their kids into top school only to find out the kid could not/did not want to do it on their own.
A big reason for struggling in college is that college is simply a poor fit for many kids.
Similar to how some girls are forced into engineering because there aren’t “enough” female engineers, college is often seen as the only path to success and happiness, so many kids are sidetracked by starting college (and not doing well) before finding their place in the world.
My experience is that kids with high GPA’s + rigor do the best in college. But forcing this model on everyone would be a disservice to many.
Employers who want to hire only people with bachelor’s degrees for jobs that do not require either major-specific or general skills indicated by bachelor’s degrees are the likely reason why.
But then maybe they just want to indirectly screen for family SES, since that is the biggest factor in whether someone attends or graduates college.
My oldest was a solid C student in high school who got some Ds and Fs too. He struggled with organization and learning disabilities. A 4 year college was not for him.
He’s at a tech school with smaller class sizes with great professors who want their students to succeed. He’s able to take 4-5 classes at a time versus the six or seven he had to take in high school. Just having less classes to juggle has really helped him a lot. The other huge factor is that he feels like he’s taking courses that he is interested in or that truly matter to his degree which has greatly improved his motivation as well.
I think you can get straight A’s in high school but if you enter into college without really knowing what you want to do or not having any true connection with your classes I can see how it would be easy to fail. Or if the child has zero financial investment in college themselves I can see them not putting much effort either as it’s no skin off their back. going to a smaller school has helped my son because he feels like the professors truly know who he is so if he does not show up in class the teachers will notice so that holds him a bit more accountable
Some high school kids have a lot of support from their teachers and parents without asking. In college, you have to ask for the help, you have to follow up, YOU have to recognize when you are in trouble.
I’ve known a couple of kids who could have kept up with the academics but not with all of life - the doctors, the medication, the getting a bad night’s sleep and having to compensate for that, with overloading on the social activities and still needing to get up for class.
“But then maybe they just want to indirectly screen for family SES, since that is the biggest factor in whether someone attends or graduates college.”
It’s easy to criticize using a BA as a screening device, until YOU are the one managing a workforce. A BA is not the be-all and end-all. But given the state of secondary education in this country, it is darn hard to hire folks with a HS diploma and have any sense of “general knowledge” related to their job performance.
We all have fond memories of a grandparent, aunt, beloved neighbor, etc. who had a solid career with just a HS education. And it would be grand if we could go back to those days. But my aunt- a pharm tech- graduated from HS knowing what a decimal point was, and what the metric system was, and why doctors measure things in kilos but patients need them converted to lbs. Her SES status was low- couldn’t afford college, but she would have been every bit prepared for college if she had been able to attend.
UCB- you and I have had this argument before. It would be nice if the kids who weren’t heading off to college could read, write, and compute at an 11th grade level. And in some parts of the country- they can. And in others- not. And hiring people who are illiterate or innumerate for jobs using equipment, requiring measurement, needing to make decisions based on data- that gets people hurt or killed.
So no- many entry level jobs do not require a college degree, but employers do not want to provide remedial education (not talking about training for a job- but remedial education- reading, writing, what is a bar chart and why 10% of a million is smaller than 5% of a billion even though ten is bigger than five) if they don’t have to. And right now they don’t- they can use “BA preferred” as a quick basic screen.
When we fix public education in this country we can go back to the days of HS graduates being able to get good, career-oriented jobs without higher education. But learning how to multiply is not something that any company wants to teach an employee.