Douglas_Knight comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Anybody else think the modern university system is grossly inefficient? Most of the people I knew in undergrad spend most of their time drinking to excess and skipping classes. In addition, barely half of undergraduates get their B.A in 6 years after starting. The whole system is hugely expensive in both direct subsidies and opportunity costs.
I think that society would benefit from switching to computer based learning systems for most kinds of classes. For example, I took two economics courses that incorporated CBL elements, and I found them vastly more engrossing and much more time-efficient than the lecture sections. Instead of applying to selective universities (which gain status by denying more students entry than others) people could get most of their prerequisites out of the way in a few months with standard CBL programs administered at a marginal cost of $0.
Do you have a statistic to back up the 6-years figure? The graduation rate appears higher than that to me.
6 year graduation rates
You're from Illinois, right? Its graduation rate of 59% is barely higher than the US average of 56%. UIUC's rate is 80%, ISU 60%, and NEIU 20%. NEIU isn't very big, but there might be lots of similar schools. (ETA: actually NEIU+CSU are already pretty close to canceling out UIUC.)
Am I from Illinois? No, actually - Maryland. Checking the data, it seems I'm in a very strange statistical anomaly: 82% in 6 years. At a state university.
No wonder my impressions were skewed.
You are at the state flagship. 82% at College Park is roughly equal to Urbana-Champaign's 80%. The point is that top schools pick students who can get through and/or do a better job of getting students through.