• Essay calls for comprehensive completion reforms instead of focus on undermatching | Inside Higher Ed

  tags: essay calls comprehensive completion focus higher ed higher inside

  • he reality is that even in a perfectly matched world, millions of low-income, minority, first-generation, and immigrant students will continue to enroll in community colleges. If we want to improve educational outcomes among these groups of students, then we need to improve the colleges so many of them will attend.

  • Less than 40 percent of students who start in community colleges complete a credential in six years. The success rates are worse for low-income and minority students.

  • A critical reason for this disappointing outcome is that reform initiatives have focused too narrowly on one aspect of the student experience, such as entry, remedial education or the first semester. While many initiatives have led to some success for targeted students, these improvements have been too small and too short-lived to affect overall college performance.

  • some are at the forefront of implementing what CCRC terms the guided pathways model.

  • That approach responds to the fact that most community college students need far more structure and guidance; it attends to all aspects of the student experience, from preparation and intake to completion. The model includes robust services to help students choose career goals and majors. It features the integration of developmental education into college-level courses and the organization of the curriculum around a limited number of broad subject areas that allows for coherent programs of study. And, importantly, it stresses the strong, ongoing collaboration between faculty, advisers and staff.

  • Gates-funded Completion by Design and Lumina’s Finish Faster

  • Ambitious and comprehensive reforms are rare for good reason — they are risky and difficult to implement. But they also offer the possibility of transformative improvement. Our frustration with the progress of reform in community colleges is not because skilled and dedicated people have not tried; rather, the reforms themselves have been self-limiting.

  • But the focus on undermatching is driven partly by a perception that the distribution of quality among colleges and universities is and will remain fixed.

  • This need not be so. Bold, large-scale reforms can improve institutions across the higher education system so that no matter where our neediest students enroll, they are ensured the best possible chance of success.

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