Why don't more Young Eagles become pilots?

Mxsmanic wrote:
A continuation rate of 0.26%--not very encouraging. An interesting
article:

http://www.flyingmag.com/blogs/flyin...re-young-eagle
s-become-pilots

The 4 out of 1500 (~0.27%) value concerns a "free" Sporty's Pilot Shop
ground school program. In fact the number only includes those who
eventually passed a written exam. The number who took the exams and failed
isn't mentioned.

There is no reason to believe that that number correlates with the fraction
of Young Eagle participants that eventually earn a pilot license.

That said, if those ~0.27% go on to become pilots, it would be comparable
to, but slightly better than, the fraction of the U.S. population that are
certificated pilots (~600,000/~300,000,000 =~ 0.2%)

Bottom line appears to be that the Young Eagles program probably doesn't
accomplish anything useful re increasing pilot population. People who want
to be pilots will do what they can to reach that goal - the rest presumably
just enjoy the chance for a free airplane ride.