July 6, 2007

Distorted Statistics on Graduation Rates

By PAUL ATTEWELL and DAVID E. LAVIN

Undergraduate enrollments have grown sixfold in the last half-century and continue to boom; today more than 80 percent of high-school graduates go to college within approximately eight years of graduation. One might expect those accomplishments to be celebrated, but the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by ambivalence, anxiety, and opposition. As enrollments continue to climb, the intensity of criticism grows ever louder.

We are told that public colleges admit

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