The Costs of Attrition
Hardly a day goes by without a college announcing it is cutting jobs, programs or spending. You’d think with all the brainpower at our colleges and universities they would be able to come up with better solutions than lopping off people, sections and services to students. But they don’t seem to. Why not? For organizations preparing students and society for the future, they are still stuck in the past. The churn and burn focus on continually bringing new students through the front door, and then just watching them go out the back door is killing college enrollments. As well as individual and collective futures. And as they leave, the budgets, employment, class sections, services and the ability to meet the educational mission go down as tuition and fees go up. In Ohio for example, the average non-graduation rate for all colleges and universities is about 48% over six years. That means the average Ohio college or university loses almost half of its population every year. ...