In yesterday's Pope Center piece, Jay Schalin takes a look at programs in the UNC system that aim at taking the weakest of the incoming students and giving them remedial work in basic math and English, as well as social skills, in hopes of increasing their graduation rates. These programs appear to do little good. Jay concludes, "The universities are not the place to re-teach high school subjects and to teach basic social skills."
I think the assumption lurking behind such programs, that it's necessarily a good thing to increase the graduation rates of marginal students, needs to be examined. Since we know that large numbers of these kids, even if they graduate, wind up in "high school jobs" anyway, is it really a good use of time and money to keep them in school for four, five, six years?
