Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

4 things my college did to more than double our graduation rate

I’ve spent most of my career in the community college setting and much of that time has been as president of Warren County Community College (WCCC), a smaller New Jersey institution less than two hours from New York City.

A benefit to leading at a smaller school like WCCC is the opportunity to try new things, even radical things—without some of the challenges that might come when initiating change at a large institution.

One of my main goals at WCCC—and a goal of all types of institutions—is increasing the graduation rate. Community colleges nationwide have set a goal to reach a 50-percent graduation rate. We’ve undertaken a few initiatives at WCCC that have helped us more than double graduation rates, and many of these initiatives can be replicated on other campuses.…Read More

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Colleges try new fixes to remedial education

Colleges are taking alternative approaches to remedial classes.

After leaving high school as a teen mother, Ashley McCullough is back on track to receive a two-year degree and work as a respiratory therapist. But she first had to conquer a remedial math class and its core lessons on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division — the same basic skills her now 6-year-old daughter will soon start to learn in elementary school.

“I didn’t have my act together,” the 23-year-old said. “I had a baby at 16.”

McCullough is far from alone at Missouri State University-West Plains, a two-year school nestled in the southern Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas border where roughly three out of every four students take at least one remedial class.…Read More

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How to improve remedial education

Legislation passed earlier this month in Connecticut allows underprepared students to take full-credit courses.

Each year, an estimated 1.7 million U.S. college students are steered to remedial classes to catch them up and prepare them for regular coursework. But a growing body of research shows the courses are eating up time and money, often leading not to degrees but to student loan hangovers.

The expense of remedial courses, which typically cost students the same as regular classes but don’t fulfill degree requirements, run about $3 billion annually, according to new research by Complete College America, a Washington-based national nonprofit working to increase the number of students with a college degree.

The group says the classes are largely failing the nation’s higher education system at a time when student-loan debt has become a presidential campaign issue.…Read More

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Cash-strapped universities look at cutting remedial classes

Remedial courses that prepare students for college-level work are in danger as states and schools look for cheaper alternatives.

As finals approached, nearly 240 students in a computer lab worked through basic algebra problems at Ohio’s Kent State University, where they and more than 3,200 of their classmates had been deemed unprepared for college-level math. They struggled to solve for x in equations such as 3x + 1 = 7, a skill students are meant to master in middle school.

Just down the hallway, university officials were trying to crunch a few numbers of their own, analyzing how much it’d cost to keep providing such remedial education to students who don’t arrive ready for college-level work.

The annual price tag for remedial education in American colleges and universities is at least $3.6 billion, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. It’s also a reason that many college students quit in frustration, contributing to high dropout rates.…Read More

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