The Oregonian printed a guest column about barriers to college, written by Professor Jeffrey Summers.
A central premise of President Barack Obama’s education plan is that college enrollment can be increased by limiting increases in college tuition, but Summers says that tuition is not the biggest obstacle to college enrollment.
“Recent articles in The Oregonian have chronicled the high absentee rates and low high school graduation rates in many of Oregon’s public school systems,” Summers says. “If students aren’t going to school and aren’t graduating, they will never strive for a college education, regardless of what that education costs.”
The second culprit, Summers says, is the complexity of the federal government’s college financial aid process.
The column was carried by The Wall Street Journal and numerous education blogs.
