Written by: Heather Zimar
Published: 06/07/2006

More High School Dropouts Get Into College

More students without a high school degree are getting into college, fueling debate over whether the students should be in college and whether they should be eligible for state financial aid, reports The New York Times.

Nearly 400,000 students without high school degrees are presently attending college, accounting for 2 percent of all college students, 3 percent at community colleges and 4 percent at for-profit colleges, according to a 2003-04 survey by the U.S. Education Department. That is a 1.4 percent increase over four years. The figures do not include home-schooled students.   

Many community colleges and two-year commercial colleges take these students, as do some less selective four-year schools. At Interboro Institute, a large commercial college in Manhattan, 94 percent of last year’s students did not have a high school diploma. Most received federal and state financial aid, up to $9,000 a student for the neediest.

At the College of New Rochelle, a four-year Catholic women’s college in Westchester County, N.Y., one-third of the 4,500 students entering its School of New Resources, for those 21 and older, did not have a high school diploma.

In California, 47,000 high school seniors, about 10 percent of the class, have not passed the exit examination required for graduation. The students can still enroll in many colleges, but they are no longer eligible for state tuition grants.

This year, Gov. George Pataki tired to withdraw state tuition grants from students without high school diplomas. He said students should prove they are committed to higher education and earn 24 college credits before the state awards them financial aid. “In too many cases, students fail to graduate from college because they were admitted to programs for which they were academically underprepared,” a spokesman for the governor, Scott Reif, said.

The State Legislature rejected the proposal. The state budget office estimated that it paid $29 million a year for 13,000 students who never graduated high school to attend college.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many commercial colleges were enrolling unqualified students, many without high school degrees, from the streets into their programs to collect their financial aid. The students then dropped out and defaulted on their government loans. To prevent this, the government now requires students who lack high school credentials and want to qualify for financial aid to pass a test approved by the Education Department to show they have the “ability to benefit” from higher education.

New York awards those students a high school equivalency degree when they complete 24 college credits. But the State Education Department says colleges should be more selective in whom they admit. This month, it proposed that students without high school credentials be required to pass more demanding tests, to show they are ready for college-level work.

The City University of New York requires that high school dropouts earn equivalency degrees before enrolling.

Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y., part of SUNY, welcomes students without high school diplomas. Last year, nearly 3 percent of the entering class last year lacked high school credentials, double the 1.5 percent two years earlier. Mary Claire Bauer said the college tried to help the students with counseling and other programs. “We give everyone the opportunity to come to college,” she said. “The success rates are only so-so.”

With the extra help, 37 percent of that group returned a year later, compared with 57 percent for the whole class.

Related Links:

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/education/30dropouts.html