Mark Schneider writing for AEI:
While we spend more than other countries, and while we have a disproportionate number of the world’s greatest universities, these international figures reveal a soft underbelly to the U.S. system of postsecondary education. The extent to which American higher education as a whole is failing to live up to its reputation as the world’s best is demonstrated further by looking at college graduation rates. In this analysis, we begin with a simple strategy: using high school graduation rates as a benchmark against which to compare college graduation rates. If there is virtually universal agreement that American high schools are failing, how do our colleges and universities measure up against such a low benchmark? …
The answer is that the low high school graduation rates that have long been decried as a failure of America’s education system are mirrored in even lower college graduation rates.