At a time when California’s public colleges are battling to maintain state funding, a report says that over a five-year period, the state spent nearly half a billion dollars to educate first-year college students who dropped out before their sophomore year.
The report found that California ranked first in the nation in the amount of taxpayer funds — $467 million — spent on students at four-year colleges who failed to return for a second year. Texas, with $441 million, and New York, with $403 million, ranked second and third.
The study, prepared by the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, analyzed federal data on retention rates at hundreds of four-year colleges and universities and states’ education funding between 2003 and 2008.