How can you rate schools by graduation rates? All a school has to do to raise graduation rates is to pass more people. Give them As for showing up. "When all else fails, lower your standards."
Profs who want to keep their jobs will cooperate with that. Seen it many times. It has become extremely difficult to flunk out of colleges these days, even if you try to major in Beer Pong, and whether you play a varsity sport or not. "All shall have prizes." Then, if you are lucky, you might get a cubicle with a computer screen in some HR department.
Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift...
"Twenty years of school and then they put you on the day shift." Unless you are of an energetic American entrepreneurial bent, and want to make things happen instead of letting them happen to you. People with true grit create jobs, they don't look for jobs. Even in a crappy Obameconomy.
Everybody always ought to think about what they can do to build something useful or interesting, now or in the future. That's the American Way. Failure is just a necessary learning experience. I have had costly failures, but I kept plugging away until things worked out and Life knocked some sense into me. Anybody can do that if they want to, and it keeps life stimulating and challenging.
Failure is the best teacher. Success teaches us little - except to keep doing the same thing over and over, like GM and Microsoft and Kodak. Giving up on life's endless opportunities is like a form of death.