Let’s stand up for college dropouts

In Boston, where I live, graduation is more than a day. It’s a whole season. It’s harder to find a parking space now than the night before a nor’easter. As a professor, father and proud mentor, I’ve attended (and battled for parking) at many graduations. 

I mention parking spaces because, amid all the celebrations I’ve recently attended, I’ve found myself looking out at the crowd of accomplished students and am drawn to the empty spaces. The emotional core of a commencement is a feeling of fulfillment. But those empty spaces represent the many students who did not make it to their graduation this year. Today, more than 39 million Americans have some college credits, but no degree.

Every year, roughly 1 million college students choose an alternative path of education or step away altogether from their academic lives for all kinds of reasons, including taking care of a sick parent, emotional stress or not being able to afford not getting a paycheck every week. They’ve reviewed the requirements, assignments, costs and time, and made a tough decision. 

The decision to drop out. 

They certainly tried – after six years, less than 60 percent of students at four-year colleges have earned a Bachelor’s degree – and they definitely paid, but they couldn’t make it work. 

So, we call these 39 million Americans “dropouts.” Society frames their decision as one of failure — their failure. They couldn’t hack it. They weren’t a fit for the traditional academic journey.

The real failure, however, is not of these 39 million so-called “dropouts.” The real failure here is society’s — a society that says education is a human right but only until the end of high school. After that, you either succeed and go onto college and graduate or you don’t. 

At a moment in time when so many people are trying to decide whether college makes sense for them, we need to find a better way to talk about what it means to succeed. Right now, the only metric of success in education is earning your degree, which leaves out millions of students, who even after completing just one semester have gained valuable experience and knowledge. 

Someone who completed six months of a degree and then decided to take a break should walk away with a recognized credential. And those six months of education should be designed to be worth the investment on their own. 

Too often, they’re not.

Our current education system needs to acknowledge and appreciate different paths and build programs that support the realities of what today’s students want and need. This means more modular and stackable credential options that give learners an opportunity to quickly and affordably build career-relevant skills, while also giving them a sustainable path to achieving a four-year diploma over time. 

The corporate world must also catch up. Companies have to rethink degree requirements that not only make no sense in terms of the skills required to do the job, but also unfairly disqualify people of color from roles they are qualified to hold. 

The system can and must change to make way for those already redefining what it means to succeed.  Many “dropouts” succeed despite the failure of our current system.

If commencement is a moment to acknowledge hard work and worthiness, then what better time to recognize this group of people? And what better way to recognize them than by calling on the institutions within the education system to do better? To evolve faster. To rapidly pivot to meet the new demands of students today who have already concluded that a college degree is not the only way to succeed. 

In a reimagined system, there will be no empty spaces. We won’t be marking success in four-year increments. We’ll be celebrating education in all forms and at all stages — for everyone, everywhere.

Anant Agarwal is founder of edX, a massive open online course (MOOC) provider created by Harvard and MIT, a professor at MIT and chief open education officer of 2U, an educational technology company.