College isn’t for everyone.

That’s a hard fact learned over decades of schools pushing students toward four-year degrees and the ostensibly lucrative careers that would follow. While a path through continued academia has worked for many Fort Collins residents – more than half age 25 or older hold a bachelors or advanced college degree – that success is not universal.

Among the 2.9 million students who enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in 2009, 53 percent earned a degree within six years, according to a 2016 report by the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That completion rate was down 2.1 percentage points from the previous year’s cohort, and the report noticed a troubling acceleration in the rate at which college students are leaving school without a degree.

Those who fail to complete degree requirements face challenges familiar to college graduates. They enter the workforce – potentially with heaps of student loan debt – while lacking proof that they have the specific skills, temperament and training to meet modern employers’ needs.

Read more at coloradoan.com.