Thoughts on Education – Reflecting at the Drop Deadline – 11/17/13

OK.  I know.  I have not posted in a while.  Shortly after the last post, I started my big grading session.  I had about 90 essays, 90 essay exams, and about 150 discussion forum grades to determine.  All of that took me a good part of two weeks, leaving me worn out afterwards.  I did not post during that time, and, as I did not post then, I keep putting off posting again, because I think I need to go back and catch up on that period.  However, I have finally just given up on that and am going to just move forward with the blog here and not worry about trying to catch up or recount.  There are a few things that I will go back and talk about, so you will see some of that over the next couple of blogs here.  However, today I’m going to write about that terrible point in the fall semester — the drop deadline.

The drop deadline in the fall semester at a community college is a very meaningful deadline.  So many of our students are not necessarily meant for college, as we are an institution that allows people to try out college for cheap and see if it works for them.  It is not unusual for me to lose a lot of students by the drop deadline, and I am not out of line from the norms in our department or among the various standard, introductory courses that our students take.  As to who drops, there is no direct profile, as they come from all types.  However, the most common drops are those who have simply stopped coming to class.  This can be a large number of students overall, as I often have 50% or less attendance in any of my face-to-face classes by this point in the semester.

What is sad, though, is how many students have stopped coming by this point and do not drop.  So, while I do sign a number of drop slips by students, a larger number of students will just take their failing grade by this point in the semester rather than drop.  Some of this may be because of the relatively new restrictions on the number of withdrawals you can have in a college career, which is either 5 or 6, if I remember correctly.  After that, you cannot drop a class, leaving you taking the F anyway.  So, some students may figure that it is not worth it at this point to waste a W.  However, I don’t think that is the big reason, as most of the students that I see are first-semester college students who are not thinking at all about their long-term college career.  They are just starting and not thinking about their college career and not worried about the number of withdrawals.

I think the bigger reason why drops are so common is that they are seen as so easy.  The students can drop all the way up until mid-November, over two-thirds of the way through the semester.  They can mess around in a class and see a lot of their progress before having to make any decision about dropping.  So, they are able to keep putting off their decision until what is, in reality, the last minute.  This should be an advantage for students, as they have many opportunities to succeed and should only have to drop when they have exhausted every possibility of getting a good grade in class.  The reality is different, however.  What I hear over and over from students is that they drop the classes when they get hard.  They drop them when they get too busy with other things.  They drop because they just don’t feel like going to class anymore.  In fact, for a lot of the students that I see, the reasons for dropping are anything but the fact that they have tried their hardest and just come up short at the very end.  I’m not denying that some students are like that, but it really does seem that the majority of what I see are students who get out when the going gets tough.  The problem with that, as I see it, is that college is going to be hard.  And, if students learn that they can get out when it gets hard, then they are learning a lesson that will not serve them well in their continuing education.  As well, it is what leads to longer and longer periods in school.  If students drop and drop and drop, they take that much longer to get a degree.  The two-year degree we offer at my community college usually takes longer than two years, as students take 12 hours or less in a semester and drop classes regularly.  Then, if they transfer, it takes longer there as well.  All of that means larger college fees and larger student loan bills.

I guess my real objection is philosophical to the lenient drop policies.  Again, I understand why they are this way, and I’m not going to get on a moral high horse and say that, back in my day, we did not consider dropping classes.  But I do think that students are not given the incentive or reason to power through their classes and force themselves to succeed over time.  I think it is too easy to drop and too easy to say that things are just a bit too hard, and to try again at a later point.  I think it contributes to the rising student loan bills and the growing number of people who start but never complete college.

What do you think?  Am I being fair, or is this just my perspective as a professor that does not take into account other realities out there.  Let me know in the comments.