Three Graphs About Trying and Failing

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

Bryan Caplan presents three graphs about trying and failing:

Three Graphs About Trying and Failing 1

Three Graphs About Trying and Failing 2

Three Graphs About Trying and Failing 3

Although kids in the bottom quartile became much more likely to try college, they became no more likely to finish.  The fruits of effort for the second quartile are also underwhelming.  How can this be?  Because the probability of finishing college if you try college actually fell for the bottom three-quarters of the distribution!  This is the fruit of America’s college-for-all mania.

Comments

  1. But it’s all win for the colleges. In fact, the increasing failure rate actually protects to some extent their reputations as smart people producers.

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