The College Dropout Scandal.

• Author: Sneed, John T.

Kirp, David. The College Dropout Scandal. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019. 142 pages. Hardcover, $24.95.

David Kirp is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a contributing writer at The New York Times, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Education. Hence he is the right academic to write a book on the scandal that is the percentage of people who start college and leave never having earned their degree. However, rather than simply report the problem, he offers suggestions about how to fix it.

Kirp argues that there are certainly people who know about the scandal of those who leave college or university without graduating, but this information is not generally known among the wider public. He diagnoses the problem and posits that the solution has also been known for many years but has not been widely applied. Colleges and universities work hard to enroll a diverse student population, including many from lower income and marginalized groups. Yet, once these students are enrolled, they are often left to figure out the system themselves, so to speak, and to assimilate into the college or university culture. This tendency to leave new students on their own does not affect white, affluent students the way it affects lower income students or those not familiar with the way universities, loans, deadlines, and paperwork operate. This causes confusion and a sense of "non-connectedness" with the university. These students are at-risk of dropping out. This results in students enrolling in two-year colleges and not graduating, sometimes even after six years. This failure to connect with the university means that 40 percent of freshmen will never make it to graduation.

Kirp's diagnosis of the problem is meticulous and beyond refutation. He offers a number of solutions that can help students connect with their respective universities and, in so doing, increase their chances of graduating. The solutions he offers are things that are already available to the college or university and can be done for no or little additional operating cost. The majority of the body of the book is a tour of universities and colleges that have implemented plans and programs to address the drop out problem. While the ideas they use are similar, the applications of the solutions are as varied as the universities. This tour of various colleges and universities working to solve the high dropout...