Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)
14. Success, Part 4
Another proposal to help students be successful in college focuses on “success indicators” or “intermediate measures of success” (e.g., “basic skills acquisition and the completion of a specific number of credits or particular gateway courses”) as opposed to “milestones that must be attained in order to get to completion.” (Jeremy Offenstein and Nancy Shulock, Taking the Next Step: The Promise of Intermediate Methods for Meeting Postsecondary Completion Goals, Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy, September 2010, p. ii.) http://www.jff.org/sites/default/files/ATD_TakingtheNextStep_092810.pdf
According to Jeremy Offenstein and Nancy Shulock, researchers at California State University, “academic behaviors that have been shown to correlate with success and that fall into this category of measure include completing college math within the first two years, enrolling in a summer session, and minimizing late registration and course withdrawals.” (Ibid., p. 5.)
An additional focus is the time students require to finish college. Sarah Turner, professor of economics and education at UVA, addressed a conference on this issue in October 2010. According to Turner, "from the 1970s to the 1990s, the proportion of students who completed a bachelor's degree in four years shrank by 13 percentage points. . . . These days earning a bachelor's degree takes at least five years, Ms. Turner said. The decline, however, was found mostly at public four-year universities that are not flagship institutions, she said. In fact, at highly selective private institutions, the number of students completing their degrees in four years increased by 8 percent between 1972 and 1992." ‘This is very much a story of stratification,’ Ms. Turner said.” One reason for the longer time to complete degrees, Turner suggested, is “students today often find it hard to finance their educations and have to work during college. Work is crowding students' time to take courses.” (Jennifer Gonzalez, “Helping Students Complete Degrees On Time,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 6, 2010.) http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Help-Students-Complete/124839/
Stan Jones, president of the nonprofit organization Complete College America, speaking at the same conference, noted that “. . . institutions were not designed for working students, a group he called the ‘emerging new majority.’ Working students tend not to have strong high-school backgrounds and usually attend college part time rather than full time, he said. ‘Yet we put them into the same system as other students and are disappointed that we don't get good results.’ Mr. Jones advocates scheduling classes in a convenient block of time to make it easier for students with work and family commitments to attend and help them graduate faster.” (Ibid.)
Enhancing success in community colleges has also been addressed, since they enroll “over 40 percent of all degree-seeking, postsecondary education students.” Unfortunately, according to a 2004 federal report, “approximately 60 percent of those students are referred to at least one remedial or developmental education course—and less than a quarter of those ultimately receive a degree or certificate.” (J. Wirt, et al., The Condition of Education of Education 2004, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics in College Completion Tool Kit, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, March 2011, p. 8.) http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/cc-toolkit.pdf
Blogger Lynn O’Shaughnessy offered tips to help students succeed in community colleges. Her suggestions included checking out schools in the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, paying attention to transferring credits, asking about articulation agreements with four-year institutions to facilitate transfer, seeking tutoring when necessary, considering on-campus housing (if available), and looking into “honors colleges;” as she stated: “A community college with an honors component can be a great alternative for smart students who are strapped for money . . . .” (Lynn O’Shaughnessy, "7 Ways to Succeed in Community College," CBS MoneyWatch, October 5, 2010.) http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/college-solution/7-ways-to-succeed-in-community-college/3225/
Unfortunately, efforts to help community college students—particularly, those who are at-risk--to succeed have not always produced significant results on a national level. An independent evaluation of the initiative “Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count,” begun in 2004 by the Lumina Foundation for Education, concluded the following: “Trends in student outcomes remained relatively unchanged, with a few exceptions. [emphasis in original] On average, after Achieving the Dream was introduced, colleges saw modest improvements in the percentage of students completing gatekeeper college English courses and courses completed. In contrast, students’ persistence and the percentage of students completing developmental math, developmental English, developmental reading, and gatekeeper math courses remained substantially the same.” (Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow, et. al., Turning the Tide: Five Years of Achieving the Dream in Community Colleges, MDRC, February 2011, Overview.) http://www.mdrc.org/publications/578/overview.html
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