Where Completion Is
Concerned, ‘Time Is the Enemy’
C
BY TABITHA WHISSEMORE
ommunity college administrators have long known
that life often gets in the way for students, making retention and completion difficult. A new report by Complete
College America (CCA) shows the impact of time on college
completion rates.
Dubbed “Time Is the Enemy,” the
report, which uses data from 33 states,
said 75 percent of college students are
commuters juggling families, jobs, and
school. Many of those students can only
attend college part time, diminishing
their chances for graduation. Less than
8 percent of part-time students complete a two-year associate degree within
four years, the study found.
Further complicating matters is a
high level of remediation. According
to the report, “remedial students are
much less likely to graduate.” That
significantly impacts completion rates
at community colleges, where half of
students seeking an associate degree
require some form of remediation. The
report said that 13. 9 percent of all students complete an associate degree in
three years. But that number drops to
9. 5 percent for remedial students.
“It’s time to fix broken approaches
to remediation,” wrote the report’s
authors.
Their report does more than simply
highlight why students fail to graduate. It also offers solutions to improve
such deficiencies. Among those solutions, the report’s authors suggest that
infusing remediation with extra class
time and tutoring support will allow
students to take full-credit classes in
their first year when retention is most
critical.
Many colleges are working on initia-
tives intended to improve developmen-
tal education, said Christopher Mullin,
program director for policy analysis at
CCA has awarded Completion
Innovation Challenge grants to several
states, including Arkansas, Colorado,
Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland,
Texas, and West Virginia, for remedia-
tion reform.
the American Association of Community
Colleges (AACC). Mullin highlighted
the Developmental Education Initiative,
a joint program from Achieving the
Dream and MDC, which works to
expand groundbreaking remedial
education efforts. “We’re seeing a lot of
innovation going on,” he said.
