Why do students drop out of college? The cause is not always clear cut

by Nathan Harris

photo by Jesse Zrull

In the recent push to improve the face of American education, college dropouts have recently received a great deal of attention. Education initiatives like No Child Left Behind have emphasized certain standards for high schools and their students. It is not so far-fetched to see these same ideas, focus specifically on numerical benchmarks and concrete standards, working their way into colleges.  

Christopher Adelman, a U.S. Department of Education researcher, wrote and acknowledged in 1999 of “the growing public use of institutional graduation rates as a measure of accountability, and the tendency in public policy and opinion to blame colleges for students’ failure to complete degrees…” 

These concerns prompt surveys, and surveys produce figures, like this, taken from an Associated Press article: “Just 54 percent of students entering four year colleges in 1997 had a degree six years later.”  

This is a significant figure; it and others like it have prompted discussion in some and instilled panic in others. Most common, though, is the question “why?” Various explanations have emerged.  

Adelman regards the difficulty of a student’s high school curriculum to be the best indicator of whether he or she will complete a degree program. Dr. Robert Pitcher, of the University of Alabama, has developed ten reasons students drop out of college. Heading the list is the difficulty of coursework, followed by the vague description of “other activities” and the uncertainty of long-range goals. 

Diane O’Donnell, advisor in Michigan State’s Undergraduate University Division, has a more complete answer. Students who leave during a semester generally do so because of medical or family concerns. As to those that drop out between semesters, she focuses on freshmen, saying, “First year students have a lot of transition issues. They don’t have good study skills or choose not to use good study skills, or they get too involved in social things.” O’Donnell also recognizes that some students simply “find the university too hard.” 

There is nothing wrong with looking at numbers, but it is equally important to look behind them, and a top ten list is a nice format, but it is sure to let some students fall between the cracks. There’s also a tendency to look at the big reasons and make assumptions about every student that drops out of college. These few reasons are not the only ones, though, and just looking at the statistics will cause you to miss the details. Following are two stories of MSU students that decided not to come back to school this semester. The stories are real, the names are not. 

Andrew was nowhere to be found the Monday of Martin Luther King Day, which was strange because he spent most of his time in the room. The next day, there was also no word, and the whole floor began to worry. Finally, Tuesday night, floor mates called Andrews home. He was there and had been since the previous day. He was not coming back for the semester. 

His roommate was angry that Andrew had told no one his plans and decided to tell him so when he came on Friday to pick up his things. He learned, though, that Andrew was suffering some form of clinical depression and had been for some time. The death of his grandma toward the beginning of fall semester, and what the roommate described as a “vicious cycle of low grades, depression, and not studying,” must have aggravated this, as well as a last-minute change to his major. 

Sarah felt that she needed to be home for the spring semester this year. A friend talked about personal issues, without many details, that were best dealt with outside the setting of MSU. She fit neither of the traditional dropout explanations; her finances were in order and her grades excellent. 

Neither of these people fit neatly in one of the boxes normally available for dropouts. It should also be said that both plan to come back to school in the fall and this further separates them from the traditional dropout definition. It is important to remember people like these two and realize that many circumstances require more than a glance for understanding and that there are more explanations than what appears to meet the eye.