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According to a new policy announced by the American Council on Education:
Nationwide, about a third of first-year students in 2007-08 had taken at least one remedial course, according to the U.S. Department of Education. At public two-year colleges, that number rises to about 42 percent.
We’ve decided this must end. All colleges that are members of our group have decided to stop offering remedial courses. From now on, students that aren’t prepared for college won’t be admitted.
Postsecondary remedial education, non-credit courses offered to college students prepare them for normal college work, is a frequent topic of conversation among college policy experts.
Most of this remediation takes place in community colleges but the community colleges appear to be perfectly satisfied with the new policy. “Hell, they don’t have any money anyway,” said Edith Smith Harrison of the American Association of Community Colleges. “There are so many unemployed people now it looks like everyone and his dog wants to go to the local community colleges. It’s pretty refreshing that now we can turn people away.”
Plus, “remediation was kinda a scam anyway,” according to John Hernandez of the American Association of Remediation Providers. “It was just a way of getting students to pay for more college and stay in longer.”
Well no more. Starting next year, if you’re not ready for college, you’re just not going to college. [Image via]
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Richard on April 01, 2011 5:54 PM:
I have a problem believing this will happen so quickly, if at all. Having taught at a large community college for twenty years, I witnessed the percentage of incoming students requiring remediation in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was staggering. Many of them repeated the remedial courses, sometimes twice, and some never got through them at all.
For many years the state reimbursed the college for non-credit remedial courses as if they were college level, credit bearing, work. During that time the administration permitted students to repeat the courses, even twice, because the state continued to pay. When, mercifully, the state stopped that practice, there actually were some students who were actually asked not to return as matriculated. It was a revenue raising scam.
Having said that, I have no problem with remedial courses being offered at community colleges. As adolescents mature, finally, in their twenties, and realize they need specific vocational training, or want to pursue a degree, they should be able to have easy access to such courses. These courses should, of course, be non-credit bearing.
I do not think any four-year school should offer such courses. That's really what community colleges are for, and the weeding out should happen there. For too long educational standards have been almost invisible, but with a surfeit of applicants it should be easier to recreate them.
Texas Aggie on April 01, 2011 6:27 PM:
To a certain extent there is a need for remedial courses. Some people just didn't get it in high school for whatever reason such as a lousy teacher or being too "cool" to study. Being older and having experience in the real world, they now realize that they need the knowledge of say writing a grammatically correct sentence, knowing when to divide and when to multiply, or what an = sign implies. The problem with many people isn't the inability to understand or learn. The problem is not having internalized the information the first time around. Now that they have matured and are prepared psychologically to learn, they need some teaching source. If it isn't remedial courses in college, then it has to be something else. To prohibit someone from reaching their potential is too costly to society and unacceptable to anyone outside the republican philosophy zone.
Really Guys on April 01, 2011 11:09 PM:
Um, pretty sure there's no such thing as the American Association of Remediation Providers. Think this is an AFD thing.
Mike on April 02, 2011 12:10 AM:
April Fool?
I hope so at least.