CMJ236 first article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/technology/09distracted.html?_r=1&hp
Above is an article which, in summation, lists American universities as a whole to be inefficient at properly educating students. One of the major reasons stated for the constant inability of American students to graduate is the focus by colleges on the enrollment numbers rather than the graduation numbers; "the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures" is a major problem with the education system (David Leonhardt).

The article states that half of enrolled college students in the United States don't graduate within six years. I researched this online and was only able to find sources from 2000 and 2001, which may be all that is available. I think, though, in order to correctly make a statement about the amount of students dropping out rather than graduating, the article should also tell from what years they got their data from. I understand that usually there are trends when it comes to high school and college drop outs and graduates, but the article states up front that "only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree".

The article lists colleges who have a high graduation rate, which is great, but they list a lot more that have low graduation rates. The article also seems to take the bulk of its information from a few studies, one of which took a random sampling of only 68 US colleges. I couldn't find an exact number of colleges that are in the US, but this link http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/alpha/ sure has well over 2000 colleges listed. To me, 68 out of 2000 (and possibly more) is not an accurate sampling.

While the author did not pull figures out of nowhere to use in his article, he did seem to use either outdated or inconclusive data to form his opinions. I do agree that the education system is going downhill, I simply just believe he could have presented his argument a bit more concisely.