Remedial courses can soak up time and money (with often poor results), but federal reports show that up to 65 percent of community college students have taken at least one remedial course within six years of enrolling. A recent study examines the outcomes of a change in the way remedial education in community colleges has been offered in the last decade and whether that change has been beneficial for students who need help getting up to speed.
The traditional remediation model in higher education mandates that students who are below college-ready thresholds—typically measured by ACT, SAT, or Accuplacer scores—pass a sequence of up to three prerequisite courses before they can enroll in college-level, credit-bearing coursework. That is, non-credit-bearing work has to be completed satisfactorily (and at full tuition prices) before students can shed the “remedial” course prefix and begin earning credits toward a degree. This turned out to be an ineffective model, in part because there were high attrition rates (due to lack of preparedness, time, cost, or all three) and many complaints that the remedial courses didn’t actually prepare students all that well for college-level course content.
So, in recent years, more than twenty states have adopted corequisite models, which allow remedial students to take college-level courses at the same time that they are taking courses that provide them with academic support connected to that college-level course. The idea is that the student is getting “just in time” support that may be more beneficial than building up skills through a prerequisite sequence of remedial courses that takes much longer to complete (and comes without the benefit of credit attainment). In the new model, the earning of college credits starts immediately for both the college-level course and the remedial course that is concurrently preparing students for it.
Read more at Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
