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University Daily Kansan / Monday, February 9, 1987
9
Bennett explains reasons behind cuts in education
Education official blames high college dropout rate
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary William Bennett, defending plans to make large budget cuts in higher education, maintains that colleges are unproductive because half of all college students drop out.
Educators call his criticisms misleading and inappropriate, and no statistics appear to support Bennett's claim entirely.
"We are concerned about productivity. Almost half the students who enter four-year programs . . . do not complete those four-year programs. We think that's a problem," Bennett told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.
A day earlier, after making the same point to the House Budget Committee, he asked, "What kind of movie is it we're running that people want to leave halfway through?"
An incomplete analysis by the department's Office of Educational Research and Improvement indicates that 50 percent to 60 percent of students who started four-year programs in 1980 graduated at the end of four years, while others presumably finishing their degrees later.
A consultant hired to analyze the same data found that 42 percent of students who started two- and four-year programs in 1980 finished them in four years, compared with 51 percent in 1976. Twenty-six percent dropped out in 1984 compared with 19 percent in 1976.
Jay Noel, a program analyst in the department's planning and evaluation service, said those numbers show a deterioration of college attendance, graduation completion that concern Bennett.
However, Noel did not have numbers just for the four-year programs Bennett mentioned to Congress. Noel also said Bennett may have been thinking of another educational research office study. This second study showed that the number of college enrollees in 1980 and about half that many bachelor's degrees awarded four years later.
The ratio backs up Bennett's completion rate, but not his growing concern, because the ratio has been virtually the same for 30 years. "I'm astonished," Noel said when told this.
Educators like to cite another educational research office study. This study concerned 1972 high
school graduates who entered college immediately and finished. The 1986 study found that 49 percent finished in four years and another 27 percent in five. The rest took six to 11.5 years to earn their degrees.
"Very often it relates to financial needs. The aid they're getting is simply not enough," said Bob Hochstein, spokesman for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "And with middle-class students, it has to do with having some other enriching experience like traveling or volunteer work."
"The old model of going to college straight out of high school and finishing four years later is essentially dead when it comes to looking at the reality of campuses today," Hochstein said.
For one thing, he said, the young student body of the past has been altered dramatically by an influx of older and poorer students, called non-traditional students, who would not have attended college 25 or 30 years ago.
Hochstein said colleges should not be judged by how fast they turn out graduates. "Very often it's a good thing education to work or work in the course of attending college." Hochstein said.
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MONDAY MANIA!
Fiction-writing classes will publish contemporary campus magazine
By PAUL SCHRAG
Staff writer
KU students will be able to read about the life of Eleanor Rigby later this month.
The story of the lonely woman made famous by the Beatles will be published in Rendezvous, a magazine of literature created in the fall by students in two fiction-writing classes.
The magazine will contain short fiction about a wide range of topics of contemporary interest, said Alan Lichter, associate professor of English and Rendezvous faculty adviser. Among the stories' themes are relationships, sexuality and search for identity, he said.
"Some are better than what you'll find published in professional journals," Lichter said.
ous will sell the magazine for 50 cents
a copy for three days in mid-Feb-
ruary on the third floor of Wescoe Hall,
he said.
Students who worked on Rendezy
Selecting which works to include was a valuable exercise in critiquing and studying fiction, he said.
Students in Lichter's fiction-writing classes from 1973 to 1980 published Rendezvous at least once a year, but this has not been published since 1980.
Lichter said his students' initiative in reviving the magazine showed their renewed interest in the intrinsic value of literary expression.
Rendezvous is a venture in self-publishing, Lichter said. Seven student editors have contributed many hours beyond class requirements since November to produce the magazine.
By producing the magazine, Lichter said, his students showed they understood that the intangible value of creative expression was more important than the pursuit of materialism.
Lichter said he suggested the idea of publishing a magazine each year but always left the decision up to his students.
Mike Mader, Great Bend senior and one of the editors, said working on the project was a great experience.
Because of this, Lichter said, the inner life of Americans, which had become barren, was experiencing a Renaissance.
"Students are discovering that the rewards American culture has traditionally offered have fallen short of their expectations," he said.
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