Starting with the End in Mind
Jenkins is a vocal advocate for change in the way community colleges advise, admit and enroll students. “Right now community colleges serve more to sort students out than to provide them with pathways to success,” he suggests. “Colleges need to begin with the end in mind and redesign their programs so that they provide clearer paths for students to degree completion, further education and advancement in the labor market.” He laments the current gap between access and success for students from low-income backgrounds. “Right now, community colleges and broad-access, four-year institutions enroll about 60 percent of the undergraduates in the U.S., including the majority of low income, Hispanic, Native American and African American undergraduates,” says Jenkins. “These institutions are designed for low cost access to college study; but they’re less well-organized to help students complete programs that enable them to achieve their goals. Too often our research shows underrepresented students are entering college and being shunted into the developmental education and general studies morass without clear guidance and support to enter a program of study that will help them to get a college degree that prepares them for a better lifer .”Contextualized Course Content
“Developmental education courses, as they are generally taught, divert students into a remedial track and fail to help students build skills that will help them succeed in college,” he said. “We put all our focus on College Algebra and English 101—when other introductory college-level courses are just as predictive of college completion.” He suggests building into the introductory college-level courses that serve as “gateways” to college programs instruction in academic foundation skills students need to succeed in those courses. Students can also benefit in instruction in college success skills such as how to take effective notes, write a college research paper, manage their time, etc. Jenkins sees a large population of first-generation learners entering college with the unclear intention of earning af bachelor’s degree only to be placed in developmental education or general education coursework with no defined course of study. The research he and his colleagues are doing—along with the experience of a growing number of colleges—indicates that students will be better able to succeed if the path to their end goals is clearer, if colleges track their progress toward those goals, and if instructors focus their teaching on learning outcomes for these larger programs, not just their individual courses.Scaffold Rather than Sort
“This open access afforded by community colleges gives the appearance of opening access to opportunity, but that’s not the experience of too many low-income and first-generation students,” said Jenkins. “Though most community colleges offer a prodigious array of courses and programs, they often don’t provide adequate guidance to help students choose a program of study and develop a concrete plan for completing it.” Additionally, said Jenkins, many students from disadvantaged backgrounds may not have a clear idea of the opportunities available to them, and research indicates that while career services and advising are offered by well meaning staff, the students who need such services are the least likely to seek them out. Paths through occupational programs such as nursing and manufacturing technology are regulated by licensure or industry standards and are generally well defined, but it is not often the case for those in transfer programs. “Community colleges tend to closely monitor enrollment in their courses but have a harder time tracking students individually through programs, especially transfer programs,” said Jenkins.
Source: Maximizing Resources for Student Success: The Business Case for Regional Public Universities to Strengthen Community College Transfer Pathways (with Guidance on Leading the Process). Please follow the link at the end of this story to read the full report from Davis Jenkins, Alison Kadlec, and James Vortuba.