“Simply waving a wand and saying, ‘There shall be no remediation’ probably won’t take care of the problem,” said Bob Wise, the president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and a former governor of West Virginia. “There is, unfortunately, a need for remediation.”
Higher-education reformers nationwide say that need can be reduced.
“The degree it’s happening right now is far too great and far too expensive,” said Kim Norris, Ohio Board of Regents spokeswoman. Ohio, with the country’s fifth-largest university system, spends about $130 million annually on remediation, Norris said.
Nationwide, some 44 percent of students at community colleges and 27 percent at four-year institutions had to take at least one remedial course in 2008, the last year for which data are available from the U.S. Department of Education. Even if students pass such remedial classes, research shows they’re less likely to graduate than their peers who start directly in college-level classes.
At Kent State—where just more than half of first-year students in 2006 had to take remedial courses in math, English, or both—remediation costs more than $750,000 a year, an amount that Provost Robert Frank calls “non-trivial.”
“We are receiving students who successfully graduated from high school who aren’t ready for [college-level] math, writing, and chemistry,” Frank said.
Following up on the 2007 mandate, Ohio legislators directed the Board of Regents and the state Department of Education this year to develop a report suggesting ways to reduce the need for remedial courses.
Jim Petro, the chancellor of the University System of Ohio, wants to solve the problem by going back to its root. He’s called for better assessments to be given in 10th grade, which would leave time for unprepared students to get extra help before they finish high school. That’s likely to become a popular idea nationwide, said Matthew Smith of the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based group that helps states develop education policies.
The University of Toledo has a different plan: changing its recruitment tactics. This year, about 21 percent of incoming freshmen at the open-admission school enrolled in at least one remedial course, said Lawrence Burns, the vice president for external affairs.
Mindful of the 2020 deadline, university officials at Toledo are working to improve their outreach to private schools, whose graduates are thought to be better prepared. The university is promising prospective students guaranteed scholarship money as early as the eighth grade, in hopes of encouraging them to acquire the skills they’ll need to avoid remedial classes.
“The bottom line is we need to make sure we’re recruiting more prepared students,” Burns said.
But some experts worry that this shift will discriminate against students from low-performing high schools in poor areas, pushing more students away from universities into already-overburdened community colleges.
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