New report on who goes to college and where in Georgia
The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement just released a report on how many of Georgia’s public high school graduates go to college and where they enroll. See the AJC story.
“This analysis provides much needed information to education stakeholders across Georgia,” said GOSA executive director Kathleen Mathers in a statement. “For the first time, we know not only how many students went to a technical college or university system institution in Georgia, but we also know how many students went to schools like Auburn, Emory, Notre Dame, and Benedict College.”
Among the key findings: 64.7 percent of the state’s 2008 high school graduates enrolled in a postsecondary institution. While 77 percent enrolled in a public college or university in Georgia, nearly a quarter of the 2008 graduates chose a private institution in Georgia or left the state for school.
The University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State University landed among the 10 most popular institutions. Technical colleges were a big choice for students from smaller communities. A technical college ranked among the top 10 most popular institutions in 165 school systems for the graduating classes of 2000-07. In fact, a technical college was the top choice for 62 of those school systems.
When students went out of state, they didn’t go too far. From 2000-07, Alabama was the most popular out-of-state choice, followed by Florida , South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Four of the top 10 most popular out-of-state schools in 2008 were Historically Black Colleges and Universities — Alabama State University, Tuskegee University, Florida A&M University and South Carolina’s Benedict College. Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse University drew similar numbers to their out-of-state counterparts.
A surprise: The University of Phoenix, which runs online and private traditional courses and degree programs, was the 6th most popular out-of-state choice for the class of 2008 although the report says many students attended physical locations in Georgia).
I see a few immediate questions in the findings for us to consider: Why are rural students attending technical schools rather than four-year colleges? Is it because those schools are in their communities or are their high school counselors steering them to the technical colleges rather than the four-year schools? What is the draw of the online college?
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23 comments Add your comment
Dr. Craig Spinks /Augusta
August 20th, 2009
1:53 pm
Does the GOSA generate and disseminate data on HOPE Scholarship-retention and college-completion rates of the various private and public high schools in our state?
Captain Underpants
August 20th, 2009
2:31 pm
Dr Craig, at this point I must issue a word of caution. AJC editorialists do not dig that deeply into a given issue. If you persist in this “detail mining” you could find yourself in a TOS violation.
Have a nice day.
Old School
August 20th, 2009
3:16 pm
Trust me, down here our guidance department is completely convinced that every student is going to college. We CTAE instructors encourage students- especially those without a clue as to what they want to do with their lives- to check into the technical colleges. HOPE Grant covers the cost and the certificate or diploma programs can be completed in a year or two. Many of our students enter the tech colleges with articulated credit which can advance them further faster.
They can support themselves, gain real world work experience and the 4 year universities will still be there if they decide a degree is a good idea. Bonus: The HOPE Scholarship will be waiting as well.
That real world experience can help make sense of college courses as students will better understand how it all fits together.
How sad to hear student proclaim that he or she is “gonna go to UGA” with no clue as to what major or field of study that student is best suited for or even interested in pursuing.
mdowney
August 20th, 2009
3:38 pm
Dr. Spinks: I asked GOSA and this is the reply;
Maureen.
We plan to do subsequent analyses using the NSC data that looks at things like college persistence and completion by high school. USG tracks HOPE retention by institution, and we report it (called the “HOPE Survival Rate” on Georgia’s Education Scoreboard here: http://gaosa.org/University.aspx?PageReq=108&SchoolId=ALL&Tab=SB&FromSection=score&ScoreBoardId=8), but that is not currently reported by high school.
HB
August 20th, 2009
4:39 pm
Old School, while I agree with you that tech colleges are a great option, I wouldn’t be too worried about students not knowing what they want to do when they arrive at UGA. High school gives a very limited knowledge of what opportunities exist. I think it’s best for students to go in having some idea of what their strengths are while not locking themselves in and then exploring the core curriculum before deciding what direction they want to take.
Zachs Mom
August 20th, 2009
5:55 pm
Not every kid needs to go to college right out of high school. I didn’t. Go to a tech school and learn a skill if you don’t already have one. Some of the jobs are not fancy but they can pay the bills in a crunch. Ever seen an unemployed plummer? HVAC repairman? I am sure that I got more out of college when I went as an adult.
Tony
August 20th, 2009
7:28 pm
Could it be that the rural students see more value in learning a trade and make a smart decisions for themselves? Why do people poo-poo the technical schools?
catlady
August 20th, 2009
7:35 pm
Another piece of simplistic “data analysis” (cough, cough).
Actually, my dissertation is on how being from a rural area impacts the college decision-making process. It CAN be studied independent of SES, parental education, etc, but you have to do more work than simple bean-counting. More Mickey-Mouse from the state.
ScienceTeacher671
August 20th, 2009
8:38 pm
MAM, sounds to me as if Foskett now ought to be writing editorials addressing that issue. Is he?
Maureen's accountability metric
August 20th, 2009
8:52 pm
ScienceTeacher671,
Do you see the post you referred to? I don’t, nor do I recall any profanity in the post that was removed, nor to I recall anything being reference that couldn’t be backed up.
Maybe that was the problem with the post.
Is this a case of people who have no hesitation about making teachers accountable, regardless of teaching conditions, getting a little hot under the collar when the readers who pay their salary hold them accountable for their words?
And this board claim to want real debate on education issues?
Maureen's accountability metric
August 20th, 2009
9:04 pm
ScienceTeacher671,
Here’s some of what Ken Foskett had to say on the matter. Unlike some people, who will remain nameless, lest their insecurity leads to the removal of yet another comment, I am willing to defend my words, and admit when they are in error.
As you can see, Foskett didn’t call the topic “worthy” he called the idea behind it “excellent”. I stand corrected.
“Regarding more control for teachers in the classroom. This is an excellent idea for the editorial board to consider, and I’ll forward this comment to Andre Jackson, the AJC’s Editorial Editor. ”
“I did a quick check back to 2000, and I cannot find an editorial on this topic. I honestly have no idea why not. It’s a good topic.”
Now I ask you ScienceTeacher671, does that sound like a ringing endorsement of how the previous editorial board handled the issue? Maybe that’s part of why they are the “previous” editorial board.
Dr. John Trotter
August 20th, 2009
10:20 pm
Heah, heah, you boys must actually think that the AJC is still a serious journalistic venture. I hope that I am wrong but I think it is just trying to figure out how to survive now, but your suggestions are correct…if the AJC would really dig deep without bias, then perhaps it will become relevant again. People began to attach less value to the paper (note that I still say “the paper”). I miss the paper before the days of Martin when he brought in the USA Today standard of writing little short articles. I guess that he thought so-called “dumb Southerners” would not read lengthy investigative articles. I miss Rick Allen, Bill Shipp, Dick Williams (he did write for the AJC at one time, right?), and, of course, the late Lewis G. Jimbo Wooten (my fellow UGA alum) is retiring, and he will be missed, particularly on Friday. Jimbo is conservative, and I too tend to be conservative on everything but Free Speech and race issues. I will even miss Cynthia T. because reading her editorials let me know what the standard liberal, Democrat line was on anything. I sort of miss that. Plus, she’s an Auburn graduate and so is my Dad.
MAM, the paper will never address the lack of discipline in the schools and the lack of teacher authority in the classroom. The AJC is still operating like the Earth is flat. Trying to improve the educational achievement of students in public school without addressing the woeful lack of structure and discipline in place is insanity. It doesn’t matter what curriculum is in place and how much money is throw at the problem. Without establishing discipline, it is all for naught. (c) MACE, August 21, 2009.
Maureen's accounability metric
August 20th, 2009
11:06 pm
Interesting that Dr. Trotter mentions Jim Wooten, as I think he’s been critical of MACE in the past. Yet Wooten is the one editor who will mention discipline, at times so brutally honest in his assessment of the situation that, if his name was taken off the byline, you’d think it was Dr. Trotter who was doing the writing. I wonder if Wooten ever got the irony of that?
And the AJC operating under the flat Earth theory is an apt analogy, except for one thing: the AJC editorial board will write an editorial saying mapmakers need to be “held accountable” for their maps to conform to the flat Earth model on the very same day an AJC reporter will run a story saying the Earth is round!
You think that might have anything to do with the fact that Creative Loafing pegged AJC losses at one million dollars a week? And why they reported, that even in a depressed newspaper industry, the AJC’s staggering losses stood out among their peers?
The thing the AJC can’t deny is that, as a member of the free press, they have a role to play in the education debate. And when they call their own credibility into question, by having the editorial board ignore what’s reported in their very own paper, they deserve to be called on it. In fact, real advocacy for what’s best for students demands it.
Even if certain former members would prefer we focus on more “pressing” issues, such as Kathy Cox’s Student Advisory Board.
Of course we know what a seminal influence the Student Advisory Board has been on education policy.
Dr. Craig Spinks /Augusta
August 21st, 2009
3:08 am
When will the GOSA perform and release to The Public the promised analyses? By the way, they don’t “promise” releasing the 08-09 GHSGT and CRCT scores until Fall 09.
Old School
August 21st, 2009
9:50 am
HB (from yesterday), I get quite a few of our top students in my ED&D class. Many of them are the ones with no clue about what they will study in college. My department works hard to get as much information to our students as possible about careers, what level of education each requires, and the potential earning power of each. It remains true that 80% of the jobs out there require technical training and only 20% require a 4 year degree. Check with our Department of Labor. It’s a real eye opener. Those stats have remained true throughout my 36 year teaching career and I don’t see them changing much.
Far too many of our students will change their majors 3 or more times after they begin their college studies because they don’t have a clear idea of their strengths and weaknesses.
Mind you, I speak only about MY school and the students of whom I have direct knowlege.
John
August 21st, 2009
2:01 pm
This whole statistical study was a little misleading in that one of the things it compared was the percentage of students from each school supposedly going to college. However, when you read the data, it lumped in the students going to state vocational-technical schools with those going to actual colleges in arriving at the percentages. While I know those schools have been renamed colleges in recent years and I know they do a good job at what they do, they are not true colleges in the same way the universities and even community colleges are. The study showed a high school in the same community as the high school my children attended having a slightly higher college attendance percentage. However, when you look at the data, a huge percentage of the kids from the other school actually enrolled in a vo tech school, while most of the students from my children’s school attended real colleges. That is comparing apples to oranges.
mdowney
August 21st, 2009
2:17 pm
John, I think that is a good point. There is a great deal of effort now to upgrade the reputation and offerings of the vo-tech schools, but the Census data on income still show that college – even some college – is still the better investment in terms of lifetime earnings. (Now, there is the argument that a college degree will mean less in earnings in the future, but I don’t buy it.)
Terrell
August 21st, 2009
3:36 pm
John I’m not sure I get your “real” colleges. Regardless it’s still college, and history has shown those that go to thes vocational schools have a better chance in the real world, because they are being exposed to their careers. I took the traditional approach, but to say one college is “real” over another bothers me especially when my brother and sister are at Griffin Tech. The “real” colleges give you more debt, and trust me if you are an employer looking to hire do you go with the person who went to the “real” college and that’s all the expereince they have or do you go with somebody who went to a vocational school that was focused on their particular job?
BG
August 21st, 2009
4:21 pm
UGA is #1 baby!
em
August 21st, 2009
4:39 pm
I think these numbers are nothing to celebrate because they beget more questions than answers. After seeing this article and looking at the website, what I find sad is that only 28.8% of students retained their HOPE scholarship after 90 credit hours and 49% graduated with a bachelor’s degree within six years of enrolling. If 64.7% are enrolling in some sort of post-secondary institution, why are more not keeping the HOPE and why are more not finishing? Although we all probably know the answer, that should be the real discussion .
HB
August 21st, 2009
5:45 pm
Don’t get me wrong, Old School. I think tech school and the option you described of following tech with traditional college are great. I think that would work well for many, many students, and I’m glad there are teachers like you letting kids know that’s an option in a era when the usual message is traditional college is a must for everyone. I worry, though, about the students who choose to go directly to a 4-year college but are pressured to have a full plan laid out before starting school. I’ve known too many kids who felt they needed to have a major picked before going into freshman year but just didn’t have any idea what their options were seeing as most majors are not subjects offered in high school. I think many of them would have been less likely to switch majors 2 or 3 times if they had waited to pursue a major after taking some core classes, determining where their strengths were, and really gotten a sense of what the different areas of study are. Of my friends in college, those who came in undetermined, had figured out their major by midway through sophomore year and lost no time by waiting to declare because they had gotten core classes out of the way (usually a couple of which also counted toward the major they settled on). My freshman friends who declared upon arrival and put off core to take upper level major courses early more often were the ones who at some point decided they hated the major they chose in high school, and were floundering around sophomore (and even into junior!) year trying to figure out what they wanted to study. So really, I don’t think and you and I are talking about such different paths. We’re both suggesting that students take time to try some things out before deciding on a major, whether that is through a tech degree or through exploring a bachelor’s core curriculum. Does that make sense?
And of course, there will always be those lucky few who know exactly what they want to be when they grow up.
Old School
August 21st, 2009
7:46 pm
This topic reminds me of a student I had back in the late 80s. His mom was just aghast that he had chosen to go to an area technical school to take automotive service classes. When asked where her son was in school, she always responded, “Why, he’s going to Tech!” knowing they would think she meant North Avenue Trade School. He’s now a successful car salesman and loves his job. I don’t think she ever came to terms with his school choice.
Daeconomist
September 1st, 2009
2:19 pm
I am a dean at a technical college, and this week we are having an employer interview our internet web design students for a $39,000 starting position. We have another set of employers who are interviewing next week for a networking position on a military base that is going to pay close to $50,000.
The typical arrogance as evidenced by comments on this site only reinforces to me that the elite do not “get” what technical colleges do or have become. While your children go to UGA and proceed to get drunk for the first two years of their lives and waste your money, my child will soon enroll and graduate in a 3D Gaming program with a real job at the end of those same two years. Good luck with your arrogance.