Apart from former colonies scattered everywhere in the world but formally part of the french state, I don’t think the factors you mention are very significant: France is a small country and patois have disappeared in 1920s. Besides, undermatching is alive and well in the Paris area, where distance can certainly not be a problem. As for the reasons, I am not an expert. I seem to recall that lack of information played a role, but that an even bigger one was that talented students from poor or uneducated backgrounds and families tend to judge their abilities to succeed in some academic institution not based on their results but rather on whether they think they will be able to duplicate the strategies they used to succeed in high school. Now, presumably talented students from richer and more educated families do exactly the same, but because elite institutions value the strategies of students from elite backgrounds (almost by definition), this strategy works for them.

@Bunbury

In most cases, after 2 years of additional preparation, but because this additional preparation takes place in a usual state-owned high school (albeit maybe one with a prestigious name), it is (with very rare exception) very cheap (essentially free by american standards). And lodging and food will usually be provided to students from poor backgrounds for a very reasonable price, again essentially freely by american standards. After these two years, a fair number or school actually pay their students, and most of them are very cheap (I don’t keep up with the numbers but 5000€ a year would be already considered expensive, I think). All in all, and even though the factors you mention @17 are certainly true, I think that my characterisation was reasonably correct: more prestigious academic careers tend to be cheaper in France than less prestigious ones, yet some students undermatch.

Apart from former colonies scattered everywhere in the world but formally part of the french state, I don’t think the factors you mention are very significant: France is a small country

What do the people who study it think causes French under-matching? My guess is “a desire to stay closer to home”, but that’s just a guess. Are linguistic factors (i.e. what language or patois is spoken in the home) a factor?

[ all of these examples are fictional, didn’t want to insult anyone]

Devotes 25+ pages to the topic, so I’d imagine so. It’s worth emphasizing that Michael McPherson is one of the book’s authors; for those unfamiliar, he has co-written several extensive, authoritative books on “financial considerations” and the role that government aid plays (or can play) in making higher education attainable (see here and here for examples; I owe his work a considerable debt for clearing up some of my deepest idealistic naivete with regard to this topic).

Of course, there’s only so much insight to be gained by hoping, imagining, & hypothesizing. Looking forward to receiving my copy of Crossing the Finish Line in the mails soon; hopefully I will have time to read the book before Harry’s next posts. :-)

Some people have mentioned California. On the east coast, however, and the upper midwest, the very wealthy and very well educated, except the well educated who are poor, do not attend public universities at all. The flagship universities have been upgraded, though, to match the top-tier flagship state universities elsewhere, and in Massachusetts the former “normal schools,” or teacher training schools, have been upgraded to the status of second-tier public universities. For those in different parts of the country, except for those about to delve into statistics and methods, their conclusions may not be informative.

Less relevant, surely, but not irrelevant. First, in many states the “flagship” universities are more expensive. This is especially so when there are explicit “tiers”, as in California between the UC school, the Cal State schools, and the community colleges. Additionally, the cost difference between when you can live with your family or live in a dorm is still significant, significant enough that if you are fairly poor or not very savvy about financing higher education this seems like a big and important difference. (In Washington state, to take an example at random, if you live on-campus at WSU it costs $19,110 on the figures I could find, but only $7,778 for an off-campus student. Tuition at Central Washington University for an in-state resident is $4841 (plus some fees that I didn’t want to add up, but that seem to be a few hundred dollars tops). So, if you live close to Central Washington University you can go there for close to $15,000 per year less than it would cost to go to WSU, and I’m sure it’s even more to go to UW. That seems like small money to someone who would seriously consider paying $40,000/year to go to college, but the vast majority of people do not pay close to that amount. To many people, including, I’d guess, many people who do not finish, $15,000/year is a significant difference. But when you’re someone to whom this difference is very salient, then life-disruptions (loss of job, medical problem in the family, car breaks down, etc.) can make you unable to pay for school for a semester or more very easily. (I saw this sort of thing regularly in the university I went to as an undergrad, and even in my own family.) So, I strongly suspect that financial considerations are still playing a strong part, especially among those most likely to not finish anyway. I don’t think this is the whole answer. Salient’s point is important, and I think there are likely many other factors, too. My worry is that, in the amount of the study I’ve seen, at least, these factors seem to all be lumped under “under-matching”, when it’s the quite disparate underlying factors that are causally important. If that’s so, then focusing on “undermatching” will mislead more than enlighten. It’s quite possible, though, that this is all addressed in sufficient detail in the full work.

For many in the US professional classes, paying for higher ed. for the children is one of these really tough issues, which amounts to a very considerable ‘% of assets/future earnings’ charge, which has a great deal to do, I think, with the feeling-they-are-poor of the American upper-middle-classes.

True, importantly true. In mentioning self-confidence as a factor for undermatching, I hadn’t meant to crowd out other factors for dropout rate.

One thing I’ve noticed, since teaching at university, is just how many students experience a life trauma over the course of the semester. Is it a consequence of moving away from home for the first time? Or is the rate of life trauma just higher in the young adult population than one might presuppose?

I’d say anywhere from 5-15% of my students each semester go through something severe (and verifiable) like unexpected eviction, break-up which necessitates moving to a new place, loss of job that they needed to support themselves, accident which results in broken limb, hospitalization, parent dying, etc.

I’ve yet to talk with a student who already knew there actually does exist a help center at my university, a kind of adviser network, designed to consult with these students and ease their transition away from, and back to, focus on their studies. It’s meager and understaffed, but the university has also established an “alarm” system that instructors can use to alert the fine folks there that a student may be in distress. The help center is an unqualified good and is possibly one of the best undergraduate resources I am familiar with at the university—but it is horribly underfunded and probably relies overmuch on the participation of overworked college advisers and instructors.

We present data for all members of the 1999 entering cohorts at 21 flagship universities and at all 47 four-year public universities in four states: Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.