College Dropout Factories
Nestor Curiel is a higher education success story. The third of six children from an immigrant Mexican family, Nestor is currently enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is on track to graduate with a degree in engineering. Nestor beat the odds–he came from a gritty working-class suburb near the South Side of Chicago and a high school where only 31 percent of students meet or exceed standards on state tests.
But Nestor could easily have slipped through the cracks. Despite hard work in high school and a grade point average of 3.6, he ended up at Chicago State University, a public four-year college located in the southern part of the city. The six-year graduation rate for Chicago State is 13 percent and more than 40 percent of students don’t