Tag: college completion
Response To Paying Colleges For Course Completion Rather Than Enrollment
I’ve talked to serveral CC instructors who believe the state should not be responsible for subsidizing a student who drops a class or fails. Solution? Charge the student the non- state subisidized course cost amount of the class if s/he drops or fails. Easier said than done, I’m sure, but the students really need to be held accountable here, more so than the institution!
Katherine Horton, Santa Rosa , Ca.
My comment: This response shows how complex these finance issues are . Other responses claim that colleges will lower their standards for passing a course if state aid is based on course completion. The current system is not working, so we need to figure something out to increase college completion.
Should Colleges Be Paid For Completion Rather Than Enrollment In Courses?
Many states pay colleges for initial student enrollment, credit hour, or after a few weeks in a course. For example, California community colleges are paid by the state after the third week of enrollment. What if colleges were paid only for students who completed courses? This would change the colleges incentives, and spur more student progress toward completion of their programs.
Lumina Foundation Reports Little Progress On Increasing College Completion Rates
| The new report, A stronger nation through higher education, shows that in 2007, 37.7 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 held a two- or four-year college degree. For 2008, the number is 37.9 percent. If the current rate of increase remains, less than 47 percent of Americans will hold a two- or four-year degree by 2025-a rate that economic experts say is far below the level that can keep the nation competitive in the global, knowledge-based economy.
The Stronger Nation report tracks progress toward Lumina’s “Big Goal:” namely, that 60 percent of Americans hold high-quality degrees by 2025. It measures progress at the national, state and county levels, with individual profiles for all 50 states. For the first time, readers will be able to compare local attainment with that of their county, state and the nation. Get quick access to state data. |
Texas Moving On Many Policies To Improve College Completion
Just more than half of Texas’ college students will graduate in six years, according to Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes. Despite his concerns, Paredes said he believes progress has been made under the “Closing the Gap Initiative” begun 10 years ago. Since then: the legislature created “college and career readiness standards” for high school students; the state is creating “end-of-course” exams based on those new standards; the number of Hispanic students going to college has risen 75%; and the number of high school graduates who are “college-ready” has risen from 18% to 22%.
How Colleges Can Help Students Complete Bachelors Degrees
A new report , Advancing By Degrees has been published by The Institute For Higher Education Leadership And Policy (www.CSUS.EDU/IHELP ). They use data from California and Florida including community college transfers, and students who enroll from high school in 4 year degrees. Here is a crucial excerpt:
“Interestingly, a higher percentage of students who did not complete a degree took a success course than those who did complete. One likely explanation of this finding is that students are either directed towards success courses or choose to enroll in success courses if they are at higher risk for not completing, so the findings reflect enrollment in the course more than the impact of the course. We also found that completion of gateway courses–college-level math and English–did not appear to explain why these students did not earn a bachelor’s degree. A large majority of students who did not earn a bachelor’s degree did complete these courses. Consequently, this analysis suggests that the appropriate institutional response would be to help students complete a higher percentage of courses and enroll continuously. Interventions might include integrating supplemental instruction into courses with high failure rates, institution “early alert” systems to identify students having trouble in particular courses, limiting the number of course withdrawals, and examining the adequacy of financial aid policies.”
More on the details of an early alert system in next blog.
