Why so Many Students Drop Out and What We Can do About it

(Photo: Nathan Dumlao. Unsplash)

WHY DO SO MANY STUDENTS DROP OUT AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

FRANK DALEY

ARE YOU A FAILING STUDENT OR A DROPOUT?

OR THE PARENT OF AN AT-RISK CHILD?

If you are a student suffering from academic failure or you've dropped out, or are thinking of it, please read this. There is hope for you.

If you are a parent in despair, cheer up.

Things can be done to help your child.

Yes, the article is long but the problem is complex so we need to unravel the strands of anxiety. So, it'll take some time to rectify this. But only a few minutes to find out how to do it.

Think of what will happen if you do nothing. Or relied on the same things that have not worked before. And won't work now.

This is a transformational process. People are complicated.

I've just spoken with a new client who has failed university once and two college programs and he's ready to fix all that. You can too.

Haven't you or your children gone through enough torture. Months? Years? Money? Stress? Let's fix this nonsense now.

An open letter to parents, teachers, educators, and students.

NOTE:

This article is fairly wide-ranging. I bring in what may seem to be tangential topics, but they are all related to the central problem of dropout causality. 

That causality is multifold and that’s one of the reasons the subject is so difficult to deal with.

Many short pieces discuss one aspect or another, but few address the problem in its entirety; it is simply too complex. 

It’s like nailing jelly. But there is one root cause that is not being noticed by most people or schools: self-knowledge.

That root is disguised, masked, by many legitimate reasons that prompt students to drop out. What applies to one stunt case s not a central cause for another.

This article is an attempt to spread out lay out some threads of the tangled web. Think of it, as you read it as if the sub-topics were before you as a mind map on a white sheet on a king-sized bed.

You are standing there, looking down on the sheet. Look down, look left and right, up and down, across and over and constantly back to the center. Follow me as I bring the map’s tendrils back to the core: dropout causality.

I am preparing a book with more details and connectivity. Please consider this as an introductory excerpt.

Be patient, read carefully, and how you think this might reflect you, or people in your life, your children perhaps, who are struggling with the problem of succeeding in school at whatever level. 

You know they have talents and gifts, but they are stalled academically and in other ways. Let’s help them.

College and university education in North America is in trouble.

Education surpasses health, war and the economy as the most critical issue for our future.

It doesn’t get the attention it deserves because its effects are long term and we have short attention spans. Now it’s on the radar.

Some of these statistics are a few years old. I have updated many. Sadly, they haven’t changed much.

WHY DO SO MANY STUDENTS FAIL OR DROP OUT?

North American education circles are quietly asking a desperate question; but soon, wider circles will be asking the question aloud, and the response is not going to be quiet unless it is a cry of despair.

There will not be a quick fix.

The question is:

“Why do so many students fail or drop out of high school, college, and university in North America?”

?   Why, given our lauded Western society, do more than 30 percent of students fail to graduate from high school in many areas?

?   Why do 50 percent of U.S. community college students fail to complete their programs after six years?

?   Why are the general dropout rates at universities so high?

?   Why are immigrant students performing worse than 30 years ago?

?   Why are Hispanic students not represented in college numbers that reflect their percentage of the population?

?   Why are Black students dropping out at a furious rate? (In 2005, Texas Southern University found that that dropout rate was 79 percent, and that was an improvement over earlier years.) In the U.S., Black colleges and universities have a graduation rate (again, after six years) of 38 percent. (Source: Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.)

       UPDATE: Graduation rate (2016): 50% of students do not get to 2nd year. (Univ. of Southern Texas website.)

David Leonhardt, writing in the New York Times on Sept. 9, 2009, reports that “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.  

UPDATE: Graduation rates: Univ. of Mass. Boston: 49% (within six years); Univ. of Montana: 44 % (2016); Univ. of New Mexico: 48% (2014)

The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as "‘failure factories,’ and they are the norm.”

I could quote statistics from all over North America—there is a great deal of supportive documentation—but the point is there is a crisis in higher education regarding dropout rates.

(Photo: Priscilla du Preeze. Unsplash)

WHAT ARE SOME CAUSES FOR FAILURE IN COLLEGE

I could give you the myriad specific, observable, tested, and recorded contributing factors, most of which will have relevance, some of the time, in some instances. Not necessarily an exhaustive list.

So, I will.

?   Poor language skills (ESL; poorly developed native English language skills in the home; children from immigrant families. Obviously, this is no fault of their own. And the families could have been here for some time).

?   Immigration (children whose background is in any non-English language)

?   Poverty

?   Parental ineptitude regarding the care and nurturing of children.

?   Parents who are not “grown-ups.” (Not exactly the same thing.)

?   Fetal alcohol syndrome (and similar conditions in newborns)

?   Mental illness

?   Emotional problems and psychological illnesses 

?   Depression

?   Anxiety

?   Self-harm

?   Suicide

?   Loneliness (severe but underreported)

?   The overburdened (and underfunded education system)

?   Etc.

Generally Acknowledged Causes of Student Attrition

Emotional, mental, and psychological illnesses plague our young people. These are chiefly anxiety and depression which lead to alcoholism, drugs, gaming, inappropriate sex (resulting in parentless babies). Etc. 

THIS JUST IN!

ANXIETY DEPARTMENT  

We think anxiety is an ethereal, insubstantial, soft, vague, mushy concept. Anxiety takes many forms, but it is pervasive among the young.

Here is a new report on what anxiety does to the children and their parents.

Parents who miss work to help children suffering from anxiety coast the Ontario economy nearly $421 million a year.

(Toronto Star, Feb 8, 2019) from The Canadian Press.)

The article says one in four parents report missing work to care for children with anxiety issues.

Full article here: https://bit.ly/2SBMZkA

(Oh yes, and another report out says that smoking cannabis helps foster depression. Like we need more of that!)

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

All these problems and few solutions.

These are all possible contributing causes to the problem in each circumstance. They can all be handled better as we know. 

But there is another cause for the dropout rate that is more difficult to grasp, identify, and help and that is self-knowledge.

I’ll return to this. 

ALL SCHOOL LEVELS REFLECT DROPOUT RATES

High school, college, and university suffer dropouts. Even grade school does.

I am writing principally about college students here, but the carnage starts long before that.

Roughly 70 percent (69.6) of students graduate from high school in the U.S.

Of the thirty percent of students who drop out of high school, thirty percent of them never get past the ninth grade. (“Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Rates and Policies” published by the Education Research Center, 2006.)

UPDATE: This remains substantially the same today, which is to say, not good.

There are also particular problems facing immigrant, Native, Black, and Hispanic people (chiefly, language, poverty, and joblessness).

GENERALLY ACKNOWLEDGED SOLUTIONS

The general solutions are obvious:

?   more help and education for parents

?   language training

?   better grade schools

?   better high schools

?   more money for everything

?   and so forth.

All these are well known, long-term, and expensive, and they are not within our immediate grasp. Improving the dropout rate, however, is achievable.

The State of Student Preparedness upon Entering College

There are FOUR BIG Problems

The typical struggling student has two significant problems before arriving at college, which collide with two more challenges they face in college. These four create a crisis.

First, many students are academically unprepared for the rigors of college. They have low academic skills: they do not read and write well enough.

Second, they don’t know why they are in college. 

Third, they do not know how to manage the transition from high school to college

When they get out of high school (if they get out of high school), they do not have the knowledge of themselves that they require to succeed. If they did, they would have fewer problems with motivation, discipline, energy, or focus; however, they do have issues with those things.

So, we must add a lack of self-knowledge and its resultant problems to their inadequate academic skills.

In college, they meet the fourth critical factor: time:

Be successful in three months—that is, pass, or be gone.

This tipping point results in a kind of psychic paralysis.

Students drop out for many reasons—some legitimate, most not.

Illness, a lack of funds, and depression may be too much for most to handle, but many students cannot deal with day-to-day things, such as healthy relationships, or making the adjustment from high school to college, or reading and writing adequately.

I would say they get off track, but many were never on track in the first place.

When their academic deficiencies and lack of direction meet the time crunch, students freeze.

 PARALYSIS

They cannot get up, get to class, do the reading, write the essays, or complete the work. (That's if the colleges demand essays. Shockingly, many do not.) 

(Photo: Mikhail Duran Unsplash)

This is partly because they don’t know how to do the work many never having had to do it in high school, even if they did ‘graduate.’

There are other contributing sub-factors too.

Most have never been away from home before; they often live in dorms where they are quickly and continuously susceptible to the enticements of parties, beer, late night, entertainment of many kinds, relationships, sex, etc. which distract them from their studies.

They have to learn to live with roommates, hard-nosed profs, weird roommates. They must learn to shop, cook, regulate their sleep, get up for 7 or 8 a.m. classes, handle administrivia related to their schoolwork, etc.  

ACADEMIC INEPTITUDE AND LACK OF MOTIVATION

It’s academic ineptitude but also a lack of motivation: they lack a burning desire to succeed at something specific.

They are confused, many not knowing whether to work or attend school.

If they choose to go to school, they are unsure as to what kind:

?   university

?   college

?   trade

?   other?

If they choose college, which one?

If college ‘X,’ then which program?

Often, they enter a program because

?   a friend is in it

?   it ‘sounds’ interesting

?   their parents suggested it

?   someone has said it will lead to a good job, or,

?   they’ve heard program ‘X’ is the “next big thing.”

Many college students miss a few classes, a few assignments, and then more classes (because they are embarrassed to go to class without the assignments), and then they default to the psychological defense mechanisms. There are 27 of these, so it gets complicated!

Some of these mechanisms manifest themselves in (apparently) socially acceptable ways such as

?   lassitude

?   partying

?   working too much (at paying jobs)

(that’s a whole other problem since many students (MOST?) need to work to pay their college fees and living bills).

?   overuse of the Internet

?   and so on.

They miss too much too fast, they get DDD-- discouraged, depressed, and they drop out.

WHAT COLLEGES ARE DOING TO HELP

Almost all colleges have experts on student retention and all kinds of student aid from financial to academic remediation, but all not all of these are successful.

They also have college success courses (mostly poorly designed).

Often, too, teachers, administrators, and students misguidedly hold these courses, even the good ones, in contempt.

The teachers say they were hired to teach college material, not high school or grade school curricula

Can't really blame them.

Some colleges say, in effect, if not out loud, ‘If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.’

Can't really blame that attitude either.

BUT THE STUDENTS CAN’T DO COLLEGE LEVEL WORK

Most high school grads can't do real college work. Often, remediation in language, math, study skills, etc. takes over for the first two years of college work. Fifty or 60 percent of are in this boat at many colleges.

(When they drop out and go to work, employers find out fast, how incapable they are of thinking or communicating on or following instructions or…well, if you are a person trying to hire good help, you know!)

We have to teach them the way they come to us, say the administrators.

And we do. (Until we change the high school exit standards and enforce them.)

But that’s for another day!

We must help these kids, but we have to raise the bar for high school grads, make it more demanding robust for students to enter some remedial programs in high school or they will be unable to succeed when they get out.

We have to create remediation programs before they can enter the regular college stream (especially at least in English, so they won't fail out because if they can't even read tread their textbooks, then what’s the point?) They won’t be able to read instructions, take accurate messages, file properly, research anything, compare and contrast, write a short accurate memo, etc.

Counseling

Colleges also offer counseling services (mostly underfunded).

At one campus I taught at there were four people in the counseling office. Usually, two were off on some kind of sick leave. I understood. They had 2,000+ students to deal with and after a while, they got burned out.

(Photo: Eddy Lackmann Unsplash)

More students than you can imagine suffering from emotional or psychological problems. Colleges are centers of education, not health, but you might reconsider that if you spoke with many students.

 SELF-HARM STATISTICS

(This seems out of place perhaps, but it isn’t.)

A study conducted by Cornell and Princeton some years ago discovered that one-fifth of their student populations were self-harming (cutting, piercing and burning themselves, for example). A subsequent survey of many U.S. colleges found this to be a commonplace.

Initially, some administrators thought the students were suffering because of the august nature of the educational institutions they were attending. I guess they figured the students were intimidated.

But a close look at educational institutions across the country showed almost the same result: 20% of students self-harmed no matter what the status or ranking of those schools. Including community colleges which are mostly a far cry from Princeton academically.

There are numerous studies that reflect this situation. Their percentages don’t always agree but the general results are alarming.

20%!

You can imagine the rate of anxiety and depression in the students if 20% of them had escalated from anxiety to self-harm.

Well, you don’t have to imagine. (This photo is mild compared to what you can find.)

(Photo: Wikipedia)

In spring 2017, nearly 40% of college students said they had felt so depressed in the prior year that it was difficult for them to function, and 61% of students said they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the same time period, according to an American College Health Association survey of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools.

Look at those statistics.

Let them sink in for a moment.

If you are a student, a parent, a counselor, or an administrator you have to have sleepiness nights.

THEN THERE IS THE SUICIDE RATE IN YOUNG PEOPLE

(OR ATTEMPTS, OR THE THOUGHTS)  

The shocking numbers

(Article in VerywellMind (Nov. 23, 2018). Jackie Burrell.

(Links to other stats provided.)

• Suicides among girls ages 15 to 19 doubled from 2007 to 2015, when it reached its highest point in 40 years.
• The suicide rate for boys ages 15 to 19 grew by 30 percent from 2007 to 2015.
• Twice as many young men, ages 20-24, commit suicide, compared with young women. In teens, ages 17-19, the ratio is even more skewed, with suicide claiming nearly five times the number of young men.
• Additional risk factors include traumatic or stressful life events; a prior suicide attempt; a sense of isolation and lack of support; impulsivity issues; substance abuse issues; poor coping skills; and access to a suicide method.
• Young men are four times more likely to die from suicide than young women. However, in the same age range, females are more likely than males to attempt suicide.

Normal problems (surface or presenting problems)

This far surpasses the usual student problems such as anxiety, depression, lack of funds, insufficient sleep because they are working 10-40 hours a week, alcohol, drugs, and gambling.

WHAT’S THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM?

What is the problem, which, being solved, would eliminate most of the traditional reasons, or conventional wisdom offered for student failure?

FIXABLE CAUSES

There are many legitimate albeit superficial (and fixable) causes.

Money, to take one example.

Many people think money is the biggest problem,

It isn’t. 

Large foundations spent a lot of money researching this (including the Gates Foundation) and abandoned it because they could not prove a persuasive argument for principle causation.

Yes, most students don’t have enough money, but that often is a cop-out. We can’t just throw money at it and hope it sticks.

Money is important, of course, but it isn’t the most important factor. 

There are many ways to finance a college education which we won’t get into here. And governments could fix this problem pretty fast if they stopped over-funding some other things.

A lack of money, unless attached to other problems, is not a sufficient reason to drop out of college.

THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM IS A LACK OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Now, before you reject this as a ‘soft’ and unprovable premise, please read on.

Work backward for a few minutes. 

Stay with me.

Many students cannot do the necessary things required for success in our modern, society. And that includes graduates from high school and college.

(Worst are graduates of those 'failure factories,' ‘colleges’ whose chief concern is money churn, not education.)

(Those places do not teach anybody anything, yet they ‘graduate’ people who can’t read, write, think, follow instructions, or use basic common sense, judgment or discernment.)

OK, back to why they won’t succeed for a moment.

The students won’t be able to

?   read well

?   write well

?   listen well

?   speak well

?   do a presentation

?   defend a position

?   frame an argument

?   write a research paper

?   tell facts from opinion

?   tell real news from fake news

?   tell opinion from informed opinion

(and they don't know how to find out)

Even as they pride themselves as being Internet-savvy.

They are not capable citizens.

WHY DO STUDENTS CHOOSE WRONG PROGRAMS?

Why do many students go into the wrong area of study or the wrong type of educational institution from high school?

They don’t know who they are and what they want and cannot choose an appropriate program or course of study.

They have no goals.

They have no end in mind, so they have no direction to follow, so they can’t have goals (even tentative ones would help).

They (maybe) have vague, floating, notional, whimsical goals. Nothing substantial. Nothing they can work toward.

They lack discipline because discipline is guided by direction and goals. They have no self-discipline, no stick-to-itiveness, no academic galvanization, no self-direction.

Students will admit that they have trouble with

?   time management (almost everyone)

?   procrastination (85%)

?   communication skills

?   goal setting

?   study skills

?   concentration

?   course selection, etc.

(This is aside from their apparent literacy and numeracy deficiencies.)

However, those student comments only confirm what all the literature has already reported. It’s all true, but there is nothing new here.

SOMETHING IS MISSING

?   something not reflected in the college success texts;

?   something the students cannot identify and

?   something most administrators do not even know about.

THAT SOMETHING, I DISCOVERED, IS SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

Some students acknowledge the theoretical value of, say, study tips, but they do not use them.

Others dismiss academic assistance, believing in a false sense of security and “success” gained by graduating from high school. (Given the quality of many high schools, that is a false sense of achievement if I ever saw one.)

These students do not adopt the strategies that successful students always use.

?   Some are contemptuous

?   Don’t listen

?   Feel the information isn’t for them.

?   Some assume they already know the point being made (a study tip or strategy) because they’ve heard it before. They didn’t actually listen at the time, however, so they do not know it, they just know of it.

 

TIME MANAGEMENT (WHICH IS REALLY SELF-MANAGEMENT)

They do not know the value of time management, for example, because they don’t know the principles of time management and don’t apply them to their goals.

That’s because they don’t have any defined goals.

They don’t realize; moreover, that time management is a function of self-management. (As are the other areas in which they lack proficiency such as goal-setting, procrastination, study skills, concentration, communication skills, etc.

THEY DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY WANT

They don’t know what they want, so they don’t know how to get it.

Drifting is mysterious to them.

Time loss is meaningless if you don’t understand the implications of wasting it.

These students don’t recognize the roads that lead to their goals because they don’t have any specific goals, just vague notions. 

They need self-knowledge.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE STUDENT? IT TAKES SELF-KNOWLEDGE

(It takes many things, of course, but first among them, in my opinion, is self-knowledge. A person, with help, can rise above some of the worst conditions.)

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY GET SELF-KNOWLEDGE?

(Photo: Raw Pixel) 

When students do have self-knowledge, they become self-directed; they automatically set meaningful goals and seek ways to achieve them.

Nothing stands in their way.

They are eager, energized, and self-motivated.

The reason for this transformation is simple:

When students do the inner work on their dreams, aspirations, and hopes, and begin to concretize these by planning, setting goals, and organizing priorities, they visualize success.

They can see it happening.

They believe in themselves.

There is no angst in getting them to work toward it.

The teacher obtains the cooperation and energy of the students, instead of trying to crank-start them at the beginning of every class.

It becomes a creative, active, and effective collaboration.

They become terrific, successful students.

I can teach them how to do this.

(Photo: Samia Liamani Unsplash)

WHO SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE?

One of the reasons students fail at college is because they should not be there.

The idea that everyone should go to college or university is nonsense.

For brevity’s sake, let’s avoid listing the qualities of both colleges and universities and assume that both are valuable if suitable for their students. In any case, many students now take both college and university courses simultaneously, or they attend each sequentially.

There are several aspects to this business of going to college.

First, non-college graduates receive less pay and respect than college graduates do. However, they might get more psychic income.

Second, because people choose not to go to college, it does not mean they aren’t bright enough.

It could mean that, but there are many kinds of abilities and talents, and our society does not regard them all the same way.

Many parents want their children to have only university-based professions.

This narrow idea of success is responsible for much unhappiness and resentment.

Many lawyers, to cite one example, are deeply unhappy in their work.

Third, colleges and universities cannot be all things to all people. If an institution doesn’t offer the education or training you want, don’t go there.

Fourth, colleges compress knowledge and training. College can fast track you if you know what you want to learn. Otherwise, why go there?

(There IS one exception!)

Fifth, many people who go to college or university and drop out feel like failures unnecessarily. Multitudes of people leave school to make a fortune. Bill Gates is an example.

(DO WE REALLY NEED MORE EXAMPLES?)

THIS IS A CREDENTIALIST SOCIETY.

If you have a degree or diploma, you generally have a chance at a “better” job.

But better for whom?

Trades, skilled work, home-care, small business, entrepreneurship, cooking, and other similar fields of work, such as the arts, are honorable, valuable, and can bring great joy and satisfaction (and money) to the individual practitioner and to society.

They don’t all require college educations.

To be fair, some colleges graduate excellent chefs, and some work admirably in conjunction with artisans and apprenticeship programs, but the majority of students do not leave college with a skilled trade, and some acquire neither an immediately marketable “skill-set” nor a genuine liberal education while they are there.

(That is one exception, by the way.)

I don’t have space here to explain why this is so. Just a couple of examples.)

WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

(Photo: Mikhail Duran Unsplash)

If you don’t have any idea of whether you should go into a specific college, university program or whatever postsecondary educational institution, but you think you should go to college, do that.

Go to the nearest liberal arts college or a community college that at least respects and teaches the liberal arts. (Lots of luck with that

Self-knowledge is the key to personal, academic and professional success. If you don’t have self-knowledge, however, and you listen to the advice of others, you might make a mistake and go to college.

If you make the wrong choice of program, you will likely fail or drop out.

Even if you “succeed” you won’t be happy about it.

That’s not success.

I’ve taught students who couldn’t get into a regular college program (students at the high-school level and/or pre-college level), students in regular college or university students, and post-graduate university students.

All these students except the post-graduate students had problems with academic skills.

But almost everybody lacked self-knowledge!

Even the post-grad students.

We know the obvious causes of lack of success in college, but the underlying basis for lack of academic or skills (or the desire to improve them) or self-motivation, is a lack of self-knowledge.

If you don’t know who you are and what you want, why would you try to get anywhere?

Successful people use the same universal “rules of engagement” with life.

Some rules in the world operate outside of our acceptance or knowledge of them.

They affect us whether

?   we know them or not

?   obey them or not

?   dismiss them or not.

They apply whether we go to college or not.

You might have three degrees, but maybe you have never asked yourself the question, “Why do I have three degrees in this subject?”

Going to college and succeeding depends on many things, but the primary one is to know why you are attending this program at this college.

To do that you must know yourself.

We all know ourselves to some degree regarding things such as favorite foods, sports, and TV programs, and we know whether we are morning or night people.

However, that is not enough to prevent us from making serious errors in our choice of a mate, college program, or career.

That comes only with some serious internal work: self-knowledge. Socrates was right.

Many of our North American students are failing or dropping out because they don’t know why they are in college.

They lack academic skills, and self-knowledge and these two lacks meet a strict time restraint in college. The collision of all these powerful forces results in an unacceptable failure rate.

The Solution?

WHAT I CAN DO TO HELP

We can’t fix the problem entirely, of course, but we can improve students’ academic state of preparedness.

They can also develop self-knowledge.

They can study themselves and improve their relationships with others, and the world and work well in senior high school or in the first semester at college.

I know it works because I do it for my students. 

I do it for individual students and for groups of students.

I can help if you are a student or your child is one.

When students get to know themselves, to know who they are and what they want, to know their strengths, abilities, talents, and gifts—and their weaknesses, they automatically know what to do.

The great thing is once they get started, you can’t stop them.

They love it!

As students get to know themselves the dropout rate itself will drop.  

I HELP YOUNG PEOPLE KNOW THEMSELVES, BECOME SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS, AND LEARN HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST POST-SECONDARY PROGRAM FOR THEM.

It could be university, college, a trade, one of the arts, the military...it doesn’t matter what they choose, the point is to use their abilities and gifts well in a field that will make them happy.

Many lawyers are unhappy in the service, and many tradespeople make more money than teachers (and have more job security!).

Remember, Jesus was a carpenter!

You might want to adjust your thinking about what you or your children should consider as a job, work, or career in life.

After I help them discover themselves, when they know who they are and what they want, they’ll KNOW what to do.

I assure you.

I AM PREPARING A BOOK ON THIS QUESTION.

If you would like to know more about dropouts, causes and solutions, please contact me: [email protected]

(My name is Frank Daley. I'm a former Dean of English and Communication and professor at Seneca College in Toronto. I taught post-graduate speech-writing and presentation skills in the Corporate communication program and interviewing skills to journalists in the post-graduate Journalism program at Ryerson University in Toronto.

I taught theatre at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Seneca College in Toronto and Algonquin College in Ottawa.

Currently, I teach people self-knowledge at Self-Knowledge College.

The success rate for college students using my books and programs averages 84%.

If you need help with dropouts, or your children do, or your school does, or your state or province does, please feel free to contact me. I have many testimonials from successful students.

Here is just one.

Kit Blott  

@ Frank Daley, Our son, whom you Mentored and tutored is motoring along. As a result of your working with him he got into Law School and Graduated last year. I have no idea what the State of his transfer exams are at, but he IS writing them.... and he IS passing. YOU did a HELL OF A GOOD JOB ON THAT KID!!! A lot of time and effort on your part enabled our son to overcome some learning disabilities, get into Law School, and pass. My husband and I highly recommend your capabilities and expertise in dealing with problem learners and children’s education in general. Allan S. Blott Q.C.

If you would like to discuss the issue for yourself or your son or daughter, free, please contact me.

Frank Daley

[email protected]

Here is what happy, successful students look like. You, or you and your child, can look like this.

(Photo: Logan Isbell Unsplash)

If you could do this yourself, you would have done it by now.

Don’t have this same problem next year.

We can discuss this free. (Limited number of appointments)

Act now.

Frank Daley

[email protected]