What do stats and reports tell us about the college dropout rate

The Ugly Truth about dropout statistics

Based on statistics The United states has the highest dropout rate in the developed world according to Business Insider. In 2008 55 percent of undergraduates received their degree over a 6 year span. In my opinion there are many reasons that students dropout but the main is the cost of attending a college or university. As stated in the statistics from College Atlas 40% of college students have parents who did not go to college and 50% of college dropouts made less than $35,000 a year, not much motivation if you ask me.



 College is a business and like all businesses it runs off of money, the money you invest in the school pays for you to go to school of course but it also helps the school run. Personally i think that higher education is very expensive and for some people it is not worth the cost that's why they feel that dropping out and going into the working world is the best option for them . The cost of attending a college or university is steadily rising and my prediction is that future generations will be less inclined to stay in school because of the ridiculous cost of attending. Although i understand that colleges need the money to run, what i do not understand is why so much money is needed from each student yearly on an increasing basis. If there is a noticeable dropout rate due to the cost you would think that there would be a plan or methods implemented to curve the steadily increasing dropout rates. And according to the statistics as costs keep rising so will the amount of students that don't finish college.Looking at numerous graphs its very clear that the ever present cost of just attending college is more of a burden to students then any other factor, the group of students it seems to have the highest effect on are underclassman specifically incoming freshman. Although not shown in the info graphic above, incoming freshman and first year students are the most likely to drop out of college. The data that i gathered does not directly translate their dropping out to cost but from statistics of college students in general, we can assume that cost plays a role in this factor.

This chart from education reform now just depicts the graduation rates over a 6 year period of different colleges.