Academic Mismatch and College Dropouts

New research has found that about 40 percent of the students who drop out of four-year programs do so because their early grades give them an indication that their academic ability is not what they thought it was. The research -- by Todd Stinebrickner, an economics professor at the University of Western Ontario, and his father, Ralph Stinebrickner, a professor emeritus at Berea College -- was conducted on college students in the U.S. The findings are significant, they argue, in suggesting new approaches to reaching such students with better information -- both before and after they make college choices.