Comment Re:Mod parent up. (Score 1) 552
Well, there's basically nothing preventing people from getting a high school diploma in the U.S.; that's kind of the problem. There are no costs to the student, it's compulsory until age 18 (some exceptions granted for "home schooling" adherents), it's more-or-less disallowed to fail students or hold them back a grade, and standards have become so low that the high school diploma is considered to be of negligible value.
As an example in New York City (where I am now), the public high schools now boast about a 64% graduation rate [1], but something like 80% or more of those graduates cannot pass a 7th-grade algebra test on entrance to the open admission college [2] (at which point about 20% graduate from that 2-year college). In fact, the majority of graduates don't even have basic arithmetic skills (like knowing times tables, negative numbers, adding fractions, multiplying decimals), and large numbers also need a few semesters of remediation in junior-high level reading & writing skills in English.
[1] http://nypost.com/2014/12/18/nycs-high-school-graduation-rate-jumps-to-64-percent/
[2] http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-04-03/news/system-failure-the-collapse-of-public-education/
So I'm assuming that in Denmark (et. al.) colleges can still take the high school diploma as legitimate proof of mastering those basic skills? Because here we can't. The open-admission community colleges are held out (by politicians, etc.) frequently as a recovery and fix-it shop for the products of high schools who don't really have basic skills. And in fact the pressure is building all the time to remove even Algebra as a required proficiency at the college level, because the community college graduation numbers would then double or triple overnight. [3]
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html
From that last article: "'There are students taking these [algebra] courses three, four, five times,' says Barbara Bonham of Appalachian State University. While some ultimately pass, she adds, 'many drop out.'". (Personally I've met students taking the basic algebra course for the sixth or seventh time where I teach). So whenever the "free college" proposal comes up, the first thing that pops into my mind is, what is the cutoff for how many times the state pays for a re-take of basic algebra? I am without question 100% all for free college, but it goes without saying that there must some criteria applied, because no body can afford infinite re-takes of junior-high level classes. Right?