“The evidence shows that these reforms do not increase graduation rates,” said Alex Goudas, a higher education researcher and professor at Delta College in Michigan who was not involved in this study. “Some students benefit a little – only temporarily – and other students are permanently harmed.”
It seems like a paradox. Students initially take more courses, but are also more likely to drop out and less likely to earn credentials. Florence Xiaotao Ran, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and lead researcher on the Tennessee study, explained to me that dropouts appear to be different types of students than those who earn more credits. Students with slightly higher high school ACT test scores who were near the old remedial education cutoff of 19 points (out of 36) and scored near the 50th percentile nationally were more likely to manage to pass the new required courses immediately. Some students who were well below this threshold also passed the required courses, but many others failed. Students below the 10th percentile (13 and below on the ACT) dropped out in greater numbers and were less likely to earn a short-term certificate.
Data from other countries show a similar pattern. In California, which largely eliminated remedial tuition in 2019, failure rates in introductory college-level math courses jumped even as more students also passed those courses, according to a study of a Spanish-speaking two-year college in southern California.
Rahn’s analysis of Tennessee has two important implications. The new core courses – as they currently operate – do not work well for the lowest achieving students. And the change doesn’t even help students, who can now earn more college credit in their first year or two of college. They still struggle to graduate and don’t get a college degree faster.
Some critics of the needed reforms, such as Delta College’s Goudas, argue that some form of remedial instruction should be reintroduced for students who lack basic math, reading and writing skills.
Meanwhile, supporters of the reforms believe that the relevant courses should be improved. Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, described the higher dropout rates and declining certification numbers in the Tennessee study as “disturbing.” But he says the old supplementary system failed too many students. (The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization also based at Teachers College, but not affiliated with the CCRC.)
“The answer is not to go back,” Brock said, “but to double down on essentials and offer students more support,” recognizing that some students need more time to build the skills they lack. Brock believes that this skill building can happen concurrently with students earning college credits, rather than as a preliminary step. “No student comes to college to take remedial courses,” he added.
One confusing problem is that core classes come in so many different forms. In some cases, students get a double dose of math or English with three credit hours of a remedial class taken concurrently with three credit hours of a college-level course. A more common approach is to take an extra hour or more for college classes. In his analysis, Rahn found that instructional time was cut in half for the weakest students who received many more hours of instruction in math or writing under the old remedial system.
“In the new scenario, everyone gets the same amount of instruction or development material, whether you’re just one point below the cutoff or 10 points below the cutoff,” Rann said.
There are also big differences in what happens during the extra maintenance time that is built into the main course. Some colleges offer study centers to help students fill their knowledge gaps. Others schedule computer lab time where students practice math problems on educational software. Another option is extended class time, where the major professor teaches the same material that is in the college-level course, only more slowly, spread over four hours a week instead of the usual three.
Overcoming weak foundational skills isn’t the only hurdle community college students face. The researchers I interviewed emphasized that these students struggle to juggle work and family responsibilities along with their classes and need more support—academic advising, career counseling, and sometimes therapy and financial aid. Without additional support, students go off the rails. This may explain why the benefits of early credit accumulation fade and still do not translate into higher graduation rates.
Even before the pandemic, the vast majority of community college students arrived at college without a strong enough foundation for regular college-credit courses and were directed toward either remedial or new required classes. High school achievement levels have worsened further from 2020when the data in Rann’s study ended. “It’s not their fault,” Ran said. “The K-12 system failed them.”
That’s why it’s more important now than ever to figure out how to help underprepared students if we’re going to improve postsecondary education.
