Too many credits

Many community college students earn more credits than they need on the way to an associate degree, concludes a Community College Research Center study by Matthew Zeidenberg. Excess credits cost about $6 million a year, counting only courses students passed.

New students often don’t know what they want to study, he writes. They may try courses that won’t count for the degree they eventually choose. Even when they decide on a goal, there’s “limited advising” to help them take the right courses.

Structural or scheduling barriers also play a role. For instance, a student may need to take course A, but that course may not be available or convenient in a given semester; it may be full or scheduled at a bad time for the student. Instead, the student takes course B in order to maintain full-time status and remain eligible for financial aid. Or a student may be waiting to be accepted into a program and may take other courses in the meantime. Colleges have indicated that this is common in the case of nursing programs.

In some cases, students who go on to four-year institutions can transfer their excess credits, but often students face the reverse problem: Credits that were supposed to transfer are rejected.

In some cases, students earn excess credits for useful courses, Zeindenberg writes. But others are “spinning their wheels” because of “poor advising, unstructured program pathways with excessive electives, unclear transfer policies, and structural barriers.”  Students pay in time and money.

California transfer plan helps, but not much

California community college students still have trouble transferring credits to state universities, despite a plan to streamline transfers, concludes an analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Under the new law, community colleges are supposed to create associate degrees designed for transfer to the California State University system. Students who earn these degrees should be able to start at a CSU with upper-division standing to earn a bachelor’s degree in two years.

Community colleges need to increase the number of associate degrees for transfer and CSU campuses should maximize the number of academic programs to which these degrees can be applied, the report recommended.

If voters don’t approve a tax increase in November, Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget calls for cutting $250  million from the University of California and CSU system and $300 million from community colleges.

Already, CSU enrollment freezes have blocked mid-year transfers. Community college students are taking longer to complete an associate degree because they can’t get into essential classes.

Is Community College Still a Path to Dream College? asks Sharee Lopez. She enrolled in Long Beach City College‘s honors program with hopes of transferring to her dream school, Berkeley. She’s not paying much for her classes, but she’ll need an extra year to fulfill prerequisites. A neuroscience major, she can’t get into the science classes she needs.

Low-cost credit for free online courses

Students will be able to earn college credit for free online courses thanks to a partnership between the Saylor Foundation, which offers  free, self-paced college courses, and StraighterLine, which offers low-cost online courses.

Saylor students will be able to take a StraighterLine exam to earn credit backed by the American Council on Education, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Or students could enroll in a StraighterLine course but use Saylor’s free course materials to save money.

Alana Harrington, director of the Saylor Foundation, said her group’s repository of free online courses won’t go anywhere, and will still grant certificates of completion. But the partnership with StraighterLine will give students a way to get credit for low-cost online courses that’s more meaningful than a certificate.

“We understand the fact that to some students, the pure acquisition of knowledge or the certificate proving their competency isn’t enough,” she said. “Credit is a form of currency today.”

StraighterLine and Saylor will work with George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College to help students transfer credits easily.

Texas innovates on price, not college costs

The $10,000 bachelor’s degree will be a reality starting next year at University of Texas of the Permian Basin. UTPB “science scholars” will be able to earn a degree in chemistry, computer science, geology, information systems or mathematics for $2,500 a year, compared to the regular cost of $6,452 a year.

“Science scholars” must be Texas residents enrolled full-time who do not need any remedial coursework.

UTPB already has a new science building that’s not fully used and enough faculty to serve additional students, so the marginal cost of adding the “scholars” will be low.

Gov. Rick Perry challenged state universities to offer a $10,000 bachelor’s degree in 2011. He hoped for “Web-based instruction, innovative teaching techniques and aggressive efficiency measures” to drive down costs, notes Inside Higher Ed. “But so far the proposals simply tinker with the way universities price the degree, not the costs.

Most low-cost bachelor’s degrees rely on partnerships with community colleges — or even high schools.

Texas A&M University-San Antonio set up a degree program in cooperation with Alamo Colleges in which students can receive a bachelor of applied arts and science for $10,000. Through the program, qualified high school juniors can enroll in a dual credit program, through which they can receive up to 60 hours of college credit – half a bachelor’s degree – for free while still in high school. Those students can then enroll in Alamo College for 27 credit hours for $1,782 and finish their degree with 36 credit hours at Texas A&M-San Antonio for $7,722.

. . . Students must be ready for college-level work as juniors in high school and must be interested in pursuing a degree with a focus in information technology.

Texas A&M University-Commerce will offer a $10,000 bachelor’s degree — if students earn 60 credits at a community college before transferring.

Completion — and quality

College completion isn’t enough, writes Elaine Maimon, president of Governors State University, in response to the January edition of Liberal Education on the completion agenda.

A degree must be more than a credential; it must represent an educational milestone. Without more underserved students completing college, demands for “quality” are elitist. Without quality, defined as meaningful educational attainment through high-impact practices, “completion” is empty.

Through the Dual Degree Program (DDP),  Governors State University partners with eight local community colleges.

The university provides substantial financial incentives for community college students to attend full-time, requires that students achieve the associate’s degree before transferring, and promotes a sense of community among DDP students and with the faculty and staff at both the community college and university. . . .

Instead of wandering through incoherent courses, DDP students learn more and spend less on their way to a quality degree, Maimon writes.

“The completion agenda is steaming ahead without setting either goals or markers for educational quality,” writes Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities in Liberal Education. “When we create incentive systems for enhanced degree production, with no questions asked about the sufficiency of learning, the door is literally wide open to choices that deplete rather than build educational quality.”

What’s the community colleges’ niche?

Community colleges should “focus on their historic strength, general education,” and let for-profit colleges handle “high-cost vocational programs,” suggests Community College Dean. Vocational training is “their niche, they’re (sometimes) good at it, and they can charge enough to sustain themselves while doing it.”

Specialization makes sense, the dean argues.

One camp says that the way to compete with the for-profits is to do it all.  Another says that we should become more like them, and focus more intensely on workforce training.  I’m thinking those are both basically doomed.  The way to thrive in the new normal is not to try to be great at everything; the world is just too big.  Instead, it’s to find something you do really well, and own that.  Let the for-profits handle HVAC repair and dental hygiene; let the community colleges do the first two years of four year degrees.

These days, community colleges are struggling with general education, which is hard to do when so many students are unprepared for college work. By contrast, they’re getting lots of attention and praise for workforce training. It’s easier to get students to a vocational certificate than to an associate degree.

Mechatronics: It’s not your dad’s shop class

It’s not your father’s shop class at high schools in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley. Students now take an Engineering Explorations class that eventually could  prepare them to study mechatronics engineering at Virginia Western Community College, reports the Roanoke Times.

There’s demand for trained workers who understand electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and information technology, says Dan Horine, head of mechatronics at Virginia Western.

Several Roanoke area education officials project the need for 250 jobs in mechatronics with a starting pay of about $18 an hour.

. . . Horine can recite a laundry list of area employers — including Logistics, Maple Leaf Bakery, Optical Cable and Pulsa — that he said face a shortage of highly qualified employees. “They are starving for people with these highly technical skills,” Horine said.

Roanoke County schools hope some high school students will be able to take two years of pre-engineering courses,  then earn a vocational certificate or two-year degree from Virginia Western while still in high school. Community college students who complete an associate degree in engineering with a B average are guaranteed admission to engineering programs at Virginia Tech.

Elite colleges recruit community college transfers

As elite colleges try to boost diversity, more community college students are transferring to selective four-year institutions, reports the New York Times.

At the end of his first year at the Community College of Philadelphia, Christopher Thomas decided that his goal — to go back to school and get a degree — was no longer worth it. He was in debt from thousands of dollars in student loans. After class, he rode a bus an hour and a half to a suburban restaurant where he worked as a waiter. When the shift ended at midnight, it took him three buses to get home. He couldn’t afford a computer, so in the middle of the night, he walked to his aunt’s house and used hers to finish his class work.

. . . A woman in the college’s Institutional Advancement department, Patricia Conroy, kept sending e-mails about a $2,000 scholarship. “WHY DON’T YOU APPLY FOR THIS,” she wrote. He won one.

. . . This fall he will enter the University of Pennsylvania.

Increasingly, the students here are making that jump. Dawn-Stacy Joyner, a former hospital cook, will also attend the University of Pennsylvania. Nine women graduating this spring have been accepted to Bryn Mawr. Larry Thi, who hopes to become a teacher, transferred to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

As debt fears grow, more ambitious students are starting at community college with hopes of going to a selective college or university, according to Rod Risley, executive director of Phi Theta Kappa, the community college honor society. While most community college students don’t tranfer, those who do are likely to compelete a degree.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation gives scholarships of up to $30,000 a year to to help outstanding community college students earn a bachelor’s degree. The foundation also gives up to $1 million a year for community college recruitment by such four-year institutions as the University of Michigan, Cornell, Amherst, Berkeley, the University of North Carolina and Bryn Mawr.

What works now to improve student success

In What Works Now, the The Campaign for College Opportunity profiles programs or practices at five California community colleges that are moving more students to a degree, a four-year university or the workforce.

City College of San Francisco gives students a “personalized educational home” during the first two years of college. Chabot College is moving students more quickly through pre-college level English. Chaffey College and Long Beach City College have expanded success centers to help struggling students.  Los Medanos College‘s Equity Scorecard “uses data, broken down by race and ethnicity, to identify campus-wide barriers to student success and to pinpoint areas for improvement.”

Each college started by analyzing data to understand the problems. All tried to remove “barriers that were preventing colleagues from talking to one another” to encourage “cross-campus collaboration.”  While working on improving curriculum and instruction, the five colleges also looked at ways to improve out-of-classroom supports, such as access to tutoring labs, counseling and orientation. Finally, it’s essential to have a community college leader who sets priorities and targets,  the report found.

None of the “what works now” colleges is waiting for better funding or better students, the Campaign observes.

We recognize that California’s colleges and universities are struggling with decreased state funding and we must continue to demand adequate support. We also believe that the practices highlighted in this report, and all other efforts to improve college completion rates, are good for students, good for future state revenues, and in some cases actually save the state money through innovation and efficiency. Practices such as utilizing data to target academic interventions, prioritizing enrollment for students with a goal of degree, transfer, or vocational certificate, requiring students to complete an educational plan, streamlining the assessments for English and math across the system, and accelerating progress for students through basic skills or remedial courses, are just a few proven innovations that can get significantly more students across the finish line.

More than 70 percent of California’s postsecondary students are enrolled in community college, the Campaign estimates, but only 30 percent will earn a certificate, degree, or transfer to a four-year university in six years.

Grad rates will include part-timers, transfers

College graduation counts will include part-time students, returnees and transfers, according to a new U.S. Education Department “action plan.”  That could raise community college graduation rates, now at 22 percent, to 40 percent, estimates the American Association of Community Colleges. Currently, federal statistics count only full-time, first-time students and treat transfers as dropouts if they don’t complete an associate degree before going on to a four-year institution.

“Not all students take a linear path in their pursuit of higher education,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “Many students work full-time and are balancing family obligations while also attending school. These new outcome measures will accurately demonstrate how postsecondary schools are preparing students for success in different ways.”

The plan will implement the recommendations of the Committee on Measures of Student Success (CMSS).