WHAT BUSINESS COULD TOLERATE THIS REJECT RATE? Congratulations! You're About to Fail.

Free and open to all, the public school system tricks students into believing they've been well educated, then shoves them into higher education, where learning is rationed by cost and capacity. And despite the decades-long effort to beef up academic demands and the tens of billions of dollars spent to open college doors to students who can't pay on their own, the percentage of U.S. college students who eventually earn degrees has been about the same since the 1970s.

Over the same period, the nation's economy, demographics and international competition have become more hostile to the ill-prepared. The sort of manufacturing jobs that can support a family are rapidly being outsourced overseas. The 14 million white-collar jobs that retiring baby boomers are leaving require more college education than the potential candidates for those jobs — who are, increasingly, Latino and African American — have to offer, according to an analysis by economist Anthony Carnevale that has pedagogues chattering.

An economist, eh? Must do some digging and post a followup. For the moment, consider the suggestions on offer in the article.

The education world's best answers are those that focus on high schools, those that focus on what colleges can do, and those that focus on the students themselves.

The emerging consensus in the first category is that just having high schools do a better job of what they do now won't be enough. All students need to be pushed more. They need more support. They need to see college as a realistic option. Exit exams, most of which measure what students should learn in middle school, aren't enough and may be a distraction from preparing students for college and a more-demanding workplace.

On the other hand, perhaps such pushing in middle and high school would equip students for many of those white-collar jobs. Does a degree in English or in area studies or communication really add any value for a middle manager at a grocery store?

With so many eager students queued up outside admissions offices, many colleges don't care much if students drop out or flunk out once their tuition checks have been cashed. A second group of advocates counters this approach by pressing colleges to help students get up to speed, suggesting the schools connect freshmen with mentors, increase financial aid so students won't have to work and could live on campus, and push schools to offer more of the courses in greatest demand so financially strapped students can graduate on time. A third category of problem-solvers pushes for programs such as those in Indiana, Michigan, Georgia and Texas, where the state provides scholarships to high school students who take harder classes. Research confirms the common sense of this: Students who work harder in high school do better afterward.

Some questions: What is wrong with working one's way through college? What is "on time?" (Note the Amtrak-like redefinition of "on time" as finishing within six years implicit in one self-study.) How many recipients of those state scholarships attempt to guilt-trip their professors into higher grades? ("I have to get a B to keep the scholarship.) To what extent does that mentoring and other hand-holding keep slower students around who hold back the pace of classes?

We must grasp that the system that served us well is a failure, producing only two bachelor degrees for every 10 students who start high school. We must acknowledge this failure as our own and recognize it as a threat to the future well-being of our children — even those who think they have a lock on the Ivy League.

Yes. And perhaps the root cause of the failure is the conceit that college is for everybody. (Via Joanne Jacobs. Be sure to read the comments.)