In my state, community college admissions are open to anyone with a high school diploma or a GED or something kinda close to it, called “ability to benefit” which is obtained by some sort of preliminary exam. To expect EVERYONE to finish up in two years after entry is so out of step with how the students entered would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. I don’t think the students themselves expect to graduate in two years. They are just glad to be in college. These students have to take all sorts of remedial classes such as pre-math, pre-English etc. in order to enter the regular classes. In our community college, there is a pre- and a pre-pre set of math classes. But the students are still glad to be there. As an aside, the best qualified nontraditional students are the older students who went to school during the bad old days when math facts had to be memorized per endless boring drills, and the weaker students are younger dropouts who still don’t know how to do long division or fractions. (I do some of those pre-pre exams so I’m speaking from experience.)

bystander, at 8:21 am EDT on March 22, 2007

The Opportunity to Teach 8th Grade Civics

The government is misguided in its application of time and degree constraints. The focus should be on the quality of content and community outcomes.

If a community college can help increase the employment and voting rates and reduce the divorce, unwed mothers and crime rates -then the measurements would be meaningful.

When the school takes on all comers — elevation of societal norms should be the measure of success.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.

Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 9:51 am EDT on March 22, 2007

Unsuitable Scalar Indicators

One of the gravest challenges facing college administrators and analysts is constraining policy makers from incorporating graduation rates as overly simplified indicators of institutional integrity. Institutional operations are too complex to be effectively represented by simple scalars such as graduation percentages. Mathematically, factors that cause a greater increase in percentages for one school can have less statistical significance than a school with a smaller increase in percentages. Percentages can be misleading. If effectiveness must be measured and tracked, institutional integrity indicators should be formed from tensors — not scalars. Clinging to overly simplistic indicators is a symptom of umwillingness to perform equitable assessments.

Taylor A. Cisco, Jr., Program Compliance Officer at City Colleges of Chicago, at 2:45 pm EDT on March 22, 2007

Graduation rates

Has everyone forgotten that access to a college education is a critical factor in the graduation rate? Colleges can only grant access but students must be the ones to work at their education. Many who start drop out because educational success means hard work, work that they don’t enjoy and can’t achieve for a variety of already defined reasons. The easiest way to rasie graduation rates would be to screen all candidates for admission and only admit those who have all the demonstrated characteristics for college success: middle to high income families and strong high school records. Graduation rates would rise and the discussion would be over. Except, all other people would be denied the opportunity to try. What a shame.

Arthur Shahverdian, at 4:15 pm EDT on March 22, 2007

Graduation Rates

Originally I was going to comment on the length of time, which is an issue due to the prep classes required by 60% of the community college students. The math sequence alone is three courses, over one year before placing into college level math. But coincidentally, a colleague sent me an article from Encarta, written by Tamim Ansary. In part, it says:

“The Truman Commission set a national goal of universal access to higher education, and it recommended a way to reach that hallowed mountaintop: by establishing tuition-free two-year community colleges that would feature open enrollment and a full range of academic (as well as vocational) offerings.

The modern community college is a comprehensive institution serving many missions, many interests: It provides disadvantaged students with a gateway to the four-year degree, jump-starts underprepared students, trains skilled workers, reeducates those whose skills are outdated, provides learning experiences to the general public, gives college graduates with philosophy degrees actual job skills ...

In the halls, I couldn’t tell faculty from students. I met an older woman back in school because her longtime marriage had ended. I met a youngster who had partied through high school, racking up Cs and Ds, and then suddenly decided he wanted the kind of job only a B.A. can secure. It wasn’t too late: If he could do well here at LaGuardia, he could transfer to a four-year school and get that B.A. after all.

Lori Garrett, who teaches anatomy at Danville Area Community College in Illinois, says that in her work, she’s promoting social change by breaking cycles. Her classes are filled with first-generation college students for whom higher education was unimaginable growing up. But most of them are mothers: for their kids college will be something mom did—entirely imaginable.”

Given the purpose of the community college as well as the policy of open enrollment, measurement by graduation rates is ludicrous. Not everyone who attends ever planned to graduate. Open enrollment goes both ways, in and out.

Janice, Florida Community College, at 5:25 pm EDT on April 2, 2007