Two-year community colleges enroll 37 percent of American undergraduates. The Center on International Education Benchmarking reports that only 13 percent of students in two-year colleges graduate in two years and that figure rises to a still-dismal 28 percent after four years.This elevated completion risk has consequences for both the student and the economy in which he participates. To wit, a student who takes on a typical amount of debt but drops out after two years never breaks even because wages of college dropouts are little better than those of high school graduates. And an economy with undertrained and less wealthy individuals will suffer from low aggregate demand and a limited capacity to produce.
