Question for gbajiFollow

I interpreted that as there are some people so unintelligent, that there's no way that they could have been successful at college. That doesn't equate to "only smart people graduate" because there is an entire average section in the middle of stupid and smart.

I do see how people initially have possibly mistaken the argument. For some reason, as a society, we value failure of grade school education different from failure of higher education. For example, "college drop out" doesn't have the same negative connotation as "high school drop out". If college is sooo easy, then it should equally be negative to say "I didn't go to college" as "I didn't go to high school".

It's not, because people see the difference in college and high school. What has happened is, people just don't like to be ridiculed for their higher learning or the lack there of.

That's all very well, but that's not really the inference most people are going to draw from this:



Yeah.



As an aside, this is partly why I think you're over-focused on academia. You can have a desire for education - I'd say knowledge, but hey - without going or wanting to go to university, and vice versa.

On that note, I'm not fixated on going rather than graduating. Don't read too much into it.

Those are really just pathetic excuses. The less money you have, the more financial assistance you will receive.

By the end of your senior year in high school, you know if school is right for you or not. Every high school has a university path, with AP and honor classes which are typically more challenging than your typical college gen ed and lower level core classes. There are so many majors and concentrations to the point that if you know school is for you, then there is a major for you.

People fall out of college not because they were paying for something they didn't care about, but because of their own failure. They typically failed in either their grades and or time management. People get caught up in the party life, lazy life, social life or work. I'm sure the majority of college drop outs had full intentions of passing.

Once again, I understand your point. Just like before, you just can't admit that you're wrong, that's why I ended our previous conversation. It was obvious that you realized that you were wrong and weren't going to admit to anything.

You clearly said the following: "it was because they were paying for something they didn't care about enough to bother putting in any effort or even attending." This translates into people drop out of college because they were paying for something that they didn't care about, not because they failed as a college student.

My counter was that they did care and they did put in effort, they just failed because they failed to know how to manage time or they chose the wrong major. This wasn't "Why am I paying for this? This is no fun. I'm dropping out". This is "Aww snap, I screwed up, I will never graduate, I'm dropping out".

This is totally relevant to my point as I argued that people typically don't ridicule college drop outs as they do high school drop outs, when in both scenarios, they equally failed.

Your counter was that people drop out of college because they decided that they were paying for something that they weren't interested in.



Well, you thought wrong. If I meant what you thought I meant you meant me meaning, then I would be wrong.

You argued a difference between high school and college is that high school is FREE. So, if you can receive financial assistance, through grants, scholarships,etc. then the fact that high school is "free" is not as substantial to your argument.

My entire point is that college drop outs are not seen the same way as high school drop outs even though they equally failed. The reasons why they failed is not only irrelevant, but in some cases the same. Why do you think high school students drop out?

So, if you agree that the two equally failed, then say so. Else, don't comment as if college students just decided that they would rather be doing something else and just quit going to school. Those students failed out and then quit.

College students fail because they didn't put enough work into their studies. Why? Not because they didn't care, typically because they thought the amount of effort that they were putting into their work was sufficient. These students, with an enormous increase of freedom, do not make the transition from high school to college and fail because of the aforementioned things.

This does not occur because they don't care, but because they thought they could party, sleep, socialize, work, etc. and pass like they did in high school. In high school, the system is set up for you to pass and teachers and faculty go to great lengths to ensure you pass, i.e. contacting your parents. That doesn't occur in college, so students take advantage of that and end up failing. Unlike in high school, when you can fail a final exam and still pass the class, in college, you typically only have a hand full of graded work. Failing one test can possibly prevent you from getting a desired grade.

What gbaji said.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

For those who couldn't glean as much from the context, I had already pointed out that the bolded was hyperbole.





You're entirely correct, which is why I'm not arguing that. There is, however, a difference between wanting knowledge and being competent at acquiring knowledge, and that difference relates to college success. "Some people" clearly excel in one and not the other.



I think you're missing the point by bifurcating the issue. It's not that there is a cutoff point below which no person can graduate (mental retardation, etc., which I explicitly stated I was not referring to), nor is it that it is purely a function of effort or money. Intelligence is a determinant of college attendance and graduation. Again, this is not my opinion. If you want to hypothesize from that that intelligence merely diminishes the level of effort required to be successful, then that's an entirely coherent and valid supposition. It does not disagree with my statement, however. There is still a relationship between intelligence and college attendance/success, enough that we could make a statistical prediction that certain people (who are not severely disabled) would be very unlikely to graduate from college.

I hope I've finally made myself clear. In the future I hope to not have to mince my insults at the risk of too much being read into them.

False. It's seen as a fluke or a bummer with a "I'll do better next time", especially if the class allows them to recover from a failed test. There's a reason why most drop outs are freshmen and sophomores and not juniors and seniors. It usually takes students 2 to 3 semesters to finally give up.
This is true because Freshman level gen ed classes are usually pretty easy and it's not until you get into your core classes that you realize you can't behave the same way and then they fail out, then lose interest.

I had a bad semester and I was busting my butt off. I seriously thought about changing my major, but I was able to recover and I didn't change my study habits or anything.

Give it up already, mostly students with 3.0+ gpa's aren't just deciding to drop out of school because they are no longer interested. These drop outs are failures that lose interest because they don't see themselves passing anytime soon.

Edit: Another reason why people fail out is overload on classes. At my school, all of the science/engineering majors started you off wth Cal-Physics, Calculus and your first core class (Comp Sci, EE, etc). The student has to know their capabilities. Again, this is underestimation.

Edited, Mar 16th 2011 2:19pm by Almalieque

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Yes, my point was that they lose interest AFTER they fail, not BEFORE. You are painting this picture that students party, socialize, etc. because they lost interest in school and then end up failing.

I'm countering that to say that these students put in the amount the effort in school that they believe is sufficient to pass, fail out of class and THEN lose interest AFTER realizing that they can't pass. This is no different than high school drop outs in many cases, which has been my entire point.

Can you read?

My point is that they don't lose interest until AFTER they fail, not before. You just stated that they lose interest and then start to fail, which is what I said your argument was, which means that I didn't misunderstand your point.



As I already countered multiple times already, that is completely false. They dropped out because they failed because they UNDERESTIMATED college. It's not necessarily that college was too hard, its that it wasn't as easy as they expected.

You keep spewing this nonsense of people dropping out because they are not bothered to pay for something they don't care about.

Once again, you know by the end of your high school career if school is right for you or not. People who aren't bothered to pay for school that they don't care about choose NOT to go to school in the first place. The amount of students who don't care about school, but choose to go (social pressure) and drop out is far less than the students who just underestimated college, failed and dropped out. This is true because even for the students who fit in the first category, they failed because they underestimated college, not because they just chose not to participate.

How are these grades worked out (like the 4.0 I see being thrown about a bit)? Tried to search for it myself but it's hard to search for something when you don't actually know what you're searching for.

Is this a score used to get in to college / university for example (of which we have our own based on the grade of A levels here) or is it something before / after this stage?

I'm glad that you finally understand. The only way your argument would have been valid is if you believed that students enrolled into college with no intentions of finishing and I'm sure that is the minority.