Progression toward Degree: Real Versus Ideal

Todd,

Thank you for this reflection on “tragedy” in the classical sense, i.e., “right versus right.” As you note, certainly the real and the ideal are at odds. I believe that as long as federal aid requires “satisfactory progress toward a degree” there will be no easy resolution at overcrowded institutions. As you note, the issue is somewhat different at other institutions. Last week in Milwaukee (at the National Symposium on Student Retention sponsored by the CSRDE, University of Oklahoma) we heard of the dire straights of nursing programs, some accepting as few as one eighth of those meeting progression requirements due to space (csrde@ou.edu for the disk of keynotes, concurrents, etc). Also, Cliff Adelman’s presentation, “Getting Graduation Rates Right,” is an engaging look at related aspects of where graduation and retention rates need attention. (Cliff is now at the Institute for Higher Education Policy.) He especially notes the very type of students you highlight—those not fitting the traditional markers (he estimates as many as 1.3 million students are excluded from our current national data sets (26% of students who don’t enter in fall terms, and 28% of students who enter Part-Time, which totals 40% after subtracting the overlap). Your progression reflections highlight an area often overlooked in retention and graduation studies as well—I’m not familiar with any datasets that account directly for attrition due to “progressed but not admitted fatigue,” which is what happens. Your paper also accents the brilliant presentation at the same conference by Laurie Schreiner, “Taking Retention to the Next Level: Strengthening Our Sophomores.” (Laurie is a senior scientist for Gallup and Professor and Director, Doctoral Programs in Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University.) She reveals the strong quantitative and qualitative support for structuring healthy advising for second-year students; this a time where the progression crunch (or exclusion) begins to take shape in earnest. Laurie’s position was first documented in our joint text “Visible Solutions for Invisible Students” (FYE-USC, 2000) and is also championed in our forthcoming text on sophomores with John Gardner et al (Jossey-Bass). But in a sense, this solution only compounds the progression problem at the overcrowded schools because the likelihood of personal time with advisors (professional or professorial) is not as strong. And, without being in the major access to professors-as-advisors in fields of interest is almost nil. In Indiana we have established a rather helpful collaborative group which helps in addressing problems such as progression. A summary of work is also found on the above disk under “Meeting of the Minds and Collaborative Action: How Indiana’s Higher Education Institutions Are Thinking Differently and Working Together To Enhance Student Success.” This issue is related to “stop-outs” and “transfers” as well. And BTW, as tuition rates continue to increase we’re likely to find an increasing number of students that fit both the excluded in Adelman’s study and those in your profile. What I don’t find in your article is a recommended solution. Any way that you select those for the few seats in overcrowded institutions still excludes others. We have a fantastic education department at my school, and a rather ambitious G.P.A. is required. However, it’s not automatic entrance as an interview process then occurs. Here the real and ideal hit. Yes, I assume hundreds of “excluded” students through the years would have made solid teachers—and perhaps did find another “pathway” to that end. But given the space parameters, this department educates as many as humanly and institutional policy with a long history of highly regarded graduates. In order to address this “progression” issue, we’ve developed various other routes to a degree through our non-tradition programs—and have been able to hundreds more. The late R.C. Snyder gives helpful and solidly tested advice in his “Psychology of Hope” text and related studies. His notion of helping students to develop “pathways,” and having alternative routes to their goals, is perhaps the best advice I can give in this real/ideal tension. For my review see: “The Hope Scale: A Measurement of Willpower and Waypower” in Proving and Improving Volume III: Tools and Techniques for Assessing the First College Year, Randy L Swing, ed. Monograph 37. Columbia, SC: (2004): 157-160. Thanks for your article. JP

jerry pattengale, AVP for Scholarship and Grants at Indiana Wesleyan University, at 7:15 am EDT on October 1, 2007

Supporting the gpa as the single criterion simply is not acceptable and may reflect a laziness by the faculty which supports such. For years we have known that college success is based on ever so many factors. If a department is serious about bringing in the best students for the major or having a major population that reflects the diversity of the service region, additional criteria beyond gpa should be used....interviews, test scores, grades in foundational courses (assuming the courses are foundational as opposed to simple gatekeepers), writing samples, field oriented experiences, letters of recommendation, etc. Weighted rubrics should then be used to admit students who will tackle the major. The weights should have some relationship to success. Have the candidates develop a portfolio.

If you want standards have them at both ends of the pipeline—-have them associated with exiting the major and have them cover knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Then have student success in meeting course objectives and program standards tied into the merit process. (There are more components to merit for teaching than student evaluations.) Reward pedagogy.

I

Norm, at 8:30 am EDT on October 1, 2007

Comment from high school teacher

As a student I worked from 40 to 60 hours a week during good weather as a construction foreman, was married and then divorced so could use all these as reasons why I did not maintain a 4.0 overall but did close to that in my major. These items were part of life I made. I chose wisely or not to go to class or not. I even let a course (outside my major) go without withdrawing and failed. That did not help my GPA. When I had to withdraw from school in late April of my last year, I had gone to a professor to beg to make up a paper or do whatever necessary to get a withdraw fail replaced. This learned professor in my major course of study did not take the time to get to know me or why I did what I felt was necessary at the time. He cursed at me and lumped me with all those “little s#%$% who wanted something for nothing”. Not so. He could have simply said no and cited academic rules, and though chagrined, I would have moved on, retaken a class, or made another decision. Another professor within my major, the department head, decided to take half of his class time and rant over his administrative duties and that students who worked should not be in college and that if we had something better to do we should leave. I bolted out of class as he was wasting my time. I had work to do. I went to school to learn and be amazed by professors and lectures on literature. Many times I was and I thank those professors every day I use that material. I now teach seniors in high school. Every day I deal with stories like yours and far worse. Even though many students have left school by the time they must take my class due to pregnancy, economic hardship, and yes, even apathy and a lack of commitment or understanding of why education is still so important, I must still hold to a relatively hard line of ‘this is the course work’. If not, those who do choose, either sooner or later, to continue their education will not be prepared for the next level. Many students border on the heroic in their efforts to get an education despite the whole range of familial or societal problems. I try to listen and be aware but the expressed purpose remains the same-teach and prepare for college or the “real “ world. Have all the professors and students read Jude The Obscure to know the value of an education to the individual. Listen to the students, as they are not all bad students just busy individuals, still a highly valued commodity. Lowering the bar does me a disservice too. Keep your standards high.Tthank you for listening.

Mark Teter, at 9:10 am EDT on October 1, 2007

While I applaud recognizing that some students are not able to afford the luxury of only being students, the reality is that a college degree is not a right, it is something you must earn (contrary to popular belief these days).

I worked three jobs as an undergraduate, carried a 21-credit load most quarters, and still managed to keep a 3.75 GPA. And I’m not some kind of genius, I just did what needed to be done in order to learn the material.

There is a place for compassion here too— if the student explains their situation and is attending class and is for the most part doing their work, most professors I know will grant extensions for students with complex life situations. But they have to be doing the work and keeping up most of the time, or it’s a waste of time for both the student and the professor.

If you want a degree, you should have to perform to some level, or the degree means nothing, and cheapens the value of the work others have done to obtain the degree.

working in academia now, at 10:45 am EDT on October 1, 2007

Professor Diacon’s mea culpa raises some serious issues about access to educational opportunities. It also skips past some equally serious issues that face high-enrollment departments. My department (Criminal Justice) has over 650 undergraduate majors (and a masters degree program) and only 9 full-time faculty. We have a 3.0 GPA requirement in place—without it, our numbers would be much higher. We instituted the GPA requirement in self-defense, and to ensure that our majors were not forced to go through their academic career without being in a class smaller than 100 students.

Professor Diacon admits some departments limit enrollments because they haven’t the faculty to adequately teach all those who want to be in the major, then suggests departments could better deal with this problem by capping enrollment. This solution is no better, though—indeed it is worse! Limiting enrollment based on performance at least gives all students the chance to make the grade (figuratively and literally) and become a major. Limiting admittance to those who were lucky enough to register in a prerequisite class before it filled bars students for no reason other than they were unlucky in the class registration “lottery.”

Professor Diacon also ignores the reality that some majors are more popular than others, and that allowing everyone to be a major without the resources to service them is unfair to all—if a department has an excess of majors and there is no money to hire new faculty (a problem at many institutions), then everyone suffers, as those who are majors cannot get into the classes they need to graduate because the classes all fill well before everyone has had a chance to register.

It would be nice to let everyone major in whatever they wanted. But until institutions reallocate resources away from low-enrollment departments to high-enrollment departments, these high-enrollment departments have to do what they can to ensure that students get the education they deserve. The problem is not “exclusionary” departmental admissions requirements—it is the unwillingness of institutions to reallocate resources.

Craig Hemmens, Boise State University, at 12:10 pm EDT on October 1, 2007

Please Forgive Me ...

Please forgive me for being so picky that I’m completely overlooking the point of this essay. But, Just Interested, as every beginning math student will tell you, there is no such thing as an “exception to the rule.”

If I say “0 ÷ b = 0,” then that is a false statement. It is not a rule.

But if I say, “for b � 0, 0 ÷ b = 0,” then the statement is always true (it is a rule ... there are no exceptions).

So you see, if there are so-called “exceptions,” they must be so stated in order to transform the “not-quite-a-rule” into a rule ... in which case the rule has no exceptions.

Well ... who cares? As much as I almost hate to admit this, if we let each other by with sloppy language and logic ... it just goes on from there. I am frequently “nailed to the wall” by more than a few of my picky friends, and I always appreciate their going to the trouble to straighten me out.

Frizbane Manley, at 1:50 pm EDT on October 1, 2007

Student quality

In all my time in education, 40+ years, the most frequent complaint I have heard is “students today are not as good as ...,” and you can fill in a time frame, but generally it is about the time “I” was in school. Let’s assume that is a true hypothesis. If it is true for g1, then that means it is true for g2 (20 years ago) and is therefore true for g3 (40 years ago). If follows that the new show, “Cavemen” is right on target. They must have been the most intelligent beings to have been on this planet.

Fred Flener, Retired, at 11:10 am EDT on October 2, 2007

I bet that the people who advocate that the university should let go these students with a 2.4 (C+) GPA — face it, kid, you’re not meant to major and graduate! — have a large overlap with the people who will look at a graduating class, see that 90% of them have a GPA of 3.0 or higher, and shout “Grade inflation! It wasn’t like this in MY day!”

Think about it, people.

Is the purpose of college to give students an education, albeit flawed, or to weed them out like a first-year engineering physics trial-by-fire course? If the latter, by all means throw the bums out, but expect them to enjoy it as much as most kids enjoy first-year physics for pre-engineers. (Which I have taught, and crushing people’s hopes, while possibly necessary, was hardly rewarding.)

Lab Rat, Enourmouse State University, at 4:10 am EDT on October 3, 2007

Weeding out students

As a student currently experiencing this issue in my major coursework, I must honestly say that it really depends on 3 factors: 1) the individual department’s needs and/or rules set in place, 2) the prestige of the university in question, and 3) the individual professor and/or TA running the course. If you have (1) be predjudicial toward students, you have a very low enrollment rate. If you have (2) being set to obscenely high standards (like mastering all topics and/or a certain GPA), than you have very admission rates. Finally, if (3) is not the best of humans alive, the course will be flawed from the onset and very few students will continue in the major and will end up dropping out or changing majors. All of these negative aspects are what is hurting college education today. Instead of keeping up with the Jones’s (China, Japan, etc.), we should focus on making our students the best in certain areas, teach them the value of incorporating these together in teams to tackle very difficult problems, and then set them loose in a world where they can be free to implement their designs without fear of being destroyed by mega-corporations and governmental regulations. Thank you.

Ray, Chemical Engineering Major at UCSB, at 4:55 pm EST on December 27, 2007