College fail

I was surprised to find out that at a great many of our colleges and universities, about half the students fail to graduate. That's amazing.

At that rate, I think you can't just say that all those students earned those failures. While grade inflation is real, and we do need accountability for failure in our society, if half the students aren't graduating, something's wrong. You shouldn't be admitting those students in the first place.

But universities don't necessarily care about students' success - they care about their tuition checks. So admitting more students means more revenue. And, as the article I linked to points out, freshman lectures with hundreds of students are cheaper than upper level classes.

I knew our education system had problems. But I didn't know it was this bad in places.