Alicia Keys |

More and more students aren't finishing college.

Yesterday The New York Times leveled the claim that U.S. colleges are possibly just as responsible for the economic mess we’re in as Wall St. Why? Because colleges can’t graduate their students. Never mind the graduates that can’t find jobs or don’t have the relevant experience or skills in this ultra-competitive market (check out this link for a graduate who is suing to get her tuition back after not being able to find a job) — a lack of graduates has led to the slowest decade of economic growth since World War II.

From the NYT article: “Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as “failure factories,” and they are the norm.”

Scary stuff. The troubling trend is laid out in a new book from economist and former Princeton president William Bowen and Michael McPherson, economist and former Macalester College president called, “Crossing the Finish Line.”

With tuition rising, the number of students dependent on loans increasing ($17 billion in 2007-2008, a nearly 600% increase from the previous decade) and jobs tough to find, something has to give.

Not everyone can bank on being the next Kanye, Reese, Bill or Alicia.