PERCENTAGES OF THE TOTAL FAILURES FOR THE GRADUATES ON THE TOTAL
  SUBJECT ENROLLMENT FOR FAILING GRADUATES, BY SEMESTERS

  Semester 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Per Cent 31.4 31.2 31.8 32.7 32.3 36.6 37.5 37.4 38.0 36.0

The percentages here are limited to the total possibilities of failure for those graduates who do fail in each semester.  They reach the highest point in the ninth semester, with a gradual increase from the first.  The high point is reached later in this series than in the one immediately preceding, because while the percentage of pupils failing decreases in the final semesters (p. 14), there is an increase in the number of failures per failing pupil (Table IV).

This increase of percentages by semesters for the graduates on the total possibility of failure, as just noted, is due to an actual increase in the number of failures for the later semesters.  By the distribution of failures in Table II more than 56 per cent of the failures are found after the completion of the second year, in spite of the fact that about 10 per cent of the pupils who graduate do so in three or three and a half years.  The failures of the graduates are simply the more numerous after the first two years in school.  That this situation is no accident due to the superior weight of any single school in the composite group, is readily disclosed by turning to the units which form the composite.  For these schools the percentages of the graduates’ failures that are found after the second year range from 40 per cent to 66 per cent.  In only three of the schools are such percentages under 50 per cent, while in three others they are above 60 per cent.

Further confirmation of how the increase of failures accompanies the pupils who stay longer in school is offered in the facts of Table IV.  Here are indicated the number of pupils who before graduating fail 1, 2, 3, etc., times, in semesters 1, 2, 3, etc., up to 10.  Of all the occurrences of only one failure per pupil in a semester, 50 per cent are distributed after the fourth semester.  In this same period (after the fourth semester) are found 53.2 per cent of those with two failures in a semester; 67.6 per cent of those with three failures in a semester; 71.6 per cent of those having four; 78.6 per cent of those having five; and all of those having six failures in a single semester.  One could almost say that the longer they stay the more they fail.

The statements presented herein regarding the relative increase of failures for at least the first three years in school are likely to arouse some surprise among that portion of the people in the profession, with whom the converse of this situation has been quite generally accepted as true.  Such an impression has indeed not seemed unwarranted according to some reports, but the responsibility for it must be due in part to the manner of presenting the data, so that