An interesting study came out of AEI recently called Diplomas and Dropouts. It took a look at college competitiveness ratings and graduations rates. (Side note: There is a data problem because transfers are not captured well and thus push down the less competitive schools graduations rates (think, if you get into Harvard, you’re not transferring), but I’m guessing that this doesn’t change the basic picture). So, what is the basic picture?
As the competitiveness increases so do graduation rate (if you can get into MIT; you can graduate – don’t confuse this with me saying that it is easy), but if you can get into a local community college, I don’t know if you have the skills to graduate or not. This part is fairly simple. The more interesting thought and one that requires a little bit more thinking (maybe the paper does the thinking…I’ll admit, didn’t read it just looked at the numbers), is does the distribution of the categories imply anything about the categories themselves? Does a disperse range mean that the quality of the school are all over the place (or is it just random)? Of course this is complicated by the fact that you can’t tell the difference – on face – between a 100% graduation rate because the school is a joke or because the school is great at helping their students succeed.
