We Need a “GED” for College Students

Almost 27 million Americans, 13.6 percent of all adults, are college dropouts.* To put that in perspective, that’s 10 million more than the number who have completed associates degrees and more than the number who’ve completed Master’s, professional, and doctoral degrees combined. These are adults over the age of 25 who were once enrolled in higher education somewhere but did not finish any certificate or degree and are no longer enrolled to do so. Unlike high school, where a dropout has the chance to earn an equivalent diploma through a battery of tests, students who drop out of college get no credit. Their money, plus the taxpayer dollars  invested in them, goes down the drain. To remedy this problem, higher education needs its own version of the GED.

General Educational Development tests were launched in 1942 to support World War II veterans who, upon returning from the war without a high school credential, wanted to attend college or find a job requiring a high school degree. Applicants must take a battery of five subject area tests and to pass they must meet certain benchmarks determined by each state both overall and in each category. The tests are developed by the American Council of Education (ACE), which will be updating them for the fifth time with a new version in place beginning in 2012. Since 1942, more than 17 million Americans have earned their high school credential through this route, including 500,000 people in 2008. According to research by James Heckman, adults with GEDS increase the high school “graduation” rate by 7-9 percentage points.

A GED diploma’s value is somewhere between the real thing and none at all. Students who earn the real diploma tend to do better than GED earners in college and later life, even after controlling for income and ability. But, GED earners are a notch above their non-GED peers. After controlling for demographic factors, adults who earn their GED are more likely than non-earners to be employed, earn higher salaries, vote, volunteer, have health insurance, use a library, read, and be engaged parents.

Just like the GED offered some middle ground between a high school dropout and someone who completed high school, colleges need to offer something for the millions of college dropouts. There are two ways this could be done.

The first option would be to follow the GED model. Some respected organization, like ACE, would draw up a set of tests and allow the public a period for comment. The tests could be less about basic skills and more about critical thinking, and they could be computer-adaptive. In fact, there are already three different tests that fit this criteria that hundreds of colleges are already administering (see here, here, and here). Colleges and universities would be responsible for administering the tests, students would pay a small fee to take them, and states would determine the passing scores. The result would be some type of general diploma that would not be worth as much as a regular one, but would signal to employers that the student was capable of college graduate-level work.

Another option would be to bolster the measures that colleges and universities already have to get students out the door with degrees. To deal with super seniors and other students who’ve amassed more than the requisite number of credits but that do not fulfill any particular major, colleges across the country are expanding the use of general diplomas. Just like the first option, a general diploma would not be as valuable as one for a specific major, but they would get the student out the door with an earned credential.

The Obama Administration has launched an ambitious American Graduation Initiative to be number one in the world in college graduates by 2020. To get there, we’ll need to think creatively about what a college diploma is, and we can start with efforts to credential the 27 million Americans who started college with hopes of earning a degree but whose dreams have been derailed.

*Calculated by subtracting the number of adults 25 years and older enrolled in a college or university from the number of adults 25 and older identifying their highest level of educational attainment as “Some college, no degree.”

Tagged as: American Graduation Initiative, GED, President Obama