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College dropouts cost Ohio $300 million, study reveals

From 2004-09, feds and states spent $9 billion in aid on freshmen who didn’t return.

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By Christopher Magan, Staff Writer Updated 7:20 AM Monday, October 11, 2010

Cash-strapped states and the federal government spent $9 billion funding freshmen college students who never returned for a second year between 2004 and 2009, with Ohio losing $300 million, a national study released today found.

“Finishing the First Lap,” an examination of students who leave after their freshmen year by the American Institutes of Research, found billions in state and federal aid and grants are spent on students who drop out.

Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, called the problem “job one” for schools.

“It is obviously the most important thing that a campus has to work on today,” he said.

The national costs are rising, climbing from $1.2 billion in 2003 to $1.37 billion in 2007, the study found. Nearly 30 percent of students who enter a four-year school don’t return for a sophomore year. About 60 percent of all students graduate with a four-year degree in six years.

Those numbers are reflected in school retention and graduation rates for the Miami Valley, which range from 57 percent to 93 percent depending on the institution and its selectivity. Ohio, the seventh largest state in population, also ranks seventh with $300 million lost to freshmen dropouts during the five years of the study.

The United States already spends more on higher education than any other developed nation, the study notes. Ohio and other states are taking steps to improve retention numbers, but poor attrition rates are one of the biggest hurdles to the national goal of the U.S. becoming the most educated nation in the world.

Despite having a practically open admission policy, Wright State University in Fairborn is right at the national average when it comes to students who drop out after their freshmen year.

School officials credit programs like the “First Year Experience,” directed by Edwin Mayes for helping retain freshmen. “We really try to focus on the transition from high school to college,” Mayes said. “We try to focus on student success in general.”

About 85 percent of freshmen participate in a one credit hour “learning community” program that connects them to campus and students studying similar subjects. It’s not mandatory, but students who participate typically get better grades and persist until their sophomore year, Mayes said.

of students graduating after six years.Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, said colleges and universities now have more incentive to help students pass courses and finish degrees because, under new state policy, their state funding depends on it.

“The goal of this exercise is not to enroll people. The goal is to graduate them,” Fingerhut said. “The freshman to sophomore retention is key to the graduation rate. We are totally committed to it.”

Fingerhut believes moving state subsidies from attendance to court completion will have a real impact in retention and graduation rates.

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