Is Your Teen Really Ready for College?

April 4, 2009

At 18, how many children are ready for college? You'd be surprised...

With over 4,000 colleges, America is unique in the world in its view of college for all who wish to attend. With each passing year, however, rising costs and other factors create a greater gap between wanting a degree and the reality of obtaining a degree. If you’re a parent of a primary or secondary school student, you would be wise to start now to think about your child’s preparation for the challenges of college life.

By this we don’t simply mean the pursuit of good grades; we mean the maturity and preparation needed to succeed in an increasingly difficult environment for entering college–and more importantly, making it through successfully. Here are some issues to consider if college is a desired destination for your children.

During the 20^th Century, Americans developed a shared belief in the essential need for all people to have access to a post secondary degree. That is a view not shared by other nations of the world. Europeans, for example, have long followed the idea that,  by age 15, a child needs to choose between a vocational track, or an academic track. Those choosing vocational would exit their education training at age 18 prepared for a career. Other students would leave high school and continue on to college to pursue a professional career with a major that was selected two or more years before.

Americans most often enter college undeclared and take two years before choosing a major. Having chosen a major, many will have buyer’s remorse and change their major one or more times.

Today nine out of ten American students graduating high school plan to go to college. However, only 6.5 out of ten will actually enter college in the year following their secondary school graduation. And 25% of those students will drop out of college during their first year.

Of all Americans age 25 to 29, only one third have earned a baccalaureate and the majority of those students took between five and six years to earn a “four-year degree.”

In the simplest of terms, 90% of our high school students envision that they will get a college degree–but far less than half of them ever will.

Perhaps our dreams were too big. After all, in 1909 only 5% of Americans age 18 to 24 had ever attended college at all. One hundred years later, that number was up to 75 percent. Still the rate of failure is very high, and that is where the question of maturity and preparation for college success must be raised: many of our children are simply unprepared for what education critic Murray Sperber has called the college life of “circus and beer.”

Countless thousands of students start college each year without ever having been responsible for getting themselves up in the morning, getting to class on their own, or studying at night without a parent checking up on them. Suddenly these carefully monitored children find themselves with a degree of freedom they never before experienced. Figuring out when the party ends and the studying begins is a choice they never needed to make on their own.

After repeated failed courses, burning through a parent’s money along the way, students dropout, or are thrown out, and less than half of those will be able to find their way back to complete their four year degree. Commonly 24-year-olds attending college will regret the fact that they are still in school, but will also acknowledge that at 18 or 19 they simply did not have the maturity skills to handle the academic rigors and the independent lifestyle of college.

The surprising truth is that the 20^th Century concept that college was a place for people between the ages of 18 and 22 is quickly disappearing in our society. Today, more than half of college undergrads are age 25 or older.

And yet for all the difficulties and challenges in obtaining a degree, there are still clear and undeniable benefits that go well beyond the additional earning power that a post secondary education makes possible. Those benefits include a far greater facility with language, both written and oral. Perhaps, most importantly, the benefit of cultivating our ability as individuals to accept, reject or suspend judgment of any given proposition, commonly known as our critical thinking skills.

Clearly success in college can be a part of our children’s future, but to secure that success, we need to look beyond academic performance and examine a child’s personal preparation for the challenge of college life.

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Other MVL Parenting Articles:

How an Empty Nest Can Improve Your Marriage

5 Very Important Things to Say to Your Teen about Sexting

Helicopter Parents: Grounding Your Natural Instincts

Sex Education, Part 1: What Both Parents and Teens Should Know

Sex Education, Part 2: Answering Tough Questions

Your Child’s 8 Different Forms of Intelligences

The Five Essential Messages of Positive Parenting

Parents, Beware of the Feelings Trap

Dating Violence: Is Your Teen Safe?

When Your Child Meets a Challenge

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To learn more about the power of positive parenting,

visit the John Gray library for your own copy of

Children Are From Heaven

Posted in 'Tweens, Parenting, Teens