This article was originally posted on The Huffington Post on May 8, 2013.

Last February, The National Center for Education reported that 50 percent of the 3 million students who begin college annually require some level of remediation. This trend costs students, parents, institutions, and taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year, while remedial students fail to earn a single college credit.

The high volume and costs of remediation have policymakers and education leaders scrambling to stop this financial hemorrhage. While reform in remedial education is inevitable, the unintended consequences of swooping changes can be harmful to students, institutions, and the economy at a time when the U.S. is struggling to fill the 21st century workforce with high-skilled workers.

Who are remediated students?

A report released today by the National Center on Education and the Economy states that many community college career programs demand little or no use of math, and high school students are taking math courses they will likely never use. In reading and writing, the group noted incoming college freshmen had simplistic and academically unchallenging skills. Finally, NCEE discovered that very little writing is required of community college freshmen, and when it is, there are low expectations for making a cogent argument and employing basic rules for writing, punctuation, and grammar. The report calls for the bar to be raised if students are to succeed in college, career, and life. Some of these same patterns exist for freshmen admitted to open admission four-year colleges.

Policymakers believe the solution to plugging up the remedial financial drain is to stop offering remedial classes in college, cut funding, or hold high schools accountable. Yet, these all-or-nothing solutions oversimplify who is entering remedial courses and how they got there. The spectrum of today’s remedial students includes:

• Nontraditional, returning students who’ve been out of school for years and need to brush up on learning skills while pursuing a degree or certificate.
• Students with undiagnosed learning disabilities.
• Low-income, minority, and first-generation students.
• Misplaced students who were misidentified as needing remedial classes.
  Multiple studies indicate up to 20 to 30 percent of remedial students are misidentified and don’t belong in developmental classes.
• Students who failed to master high school material due to a lack of focus, emotional/social maturity, home support, poor instruction, or a combination of these factors.

As funding plummets, remedial students still remain, as does the need to fill many of the 3.9 million U.S. job openings that require a college degree. Realizing remediation will be anything but a quick fix, many people and organizations are offering cost-saving strategies.

What does remedial reform look like?

Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently argued that Pell grant funding — a need-based grant that helps qualifying students afford college — should not be available for students who require remedial education. Instead, he believes this $40 billion annual federal aid should only be awarded to students who take credit-bearing classes. The argument has merit. Statistically, the 35 percent of students who require remediation in four-year institutions complete a degree within six years, and worse, less than 10 percent of students enrolled in one or more developmental classes in community colleges graduate within three years.

Petrilli’s solution raises many questions. Is limiting college access to low-income students really a solution to remediation? Will high schools have the bandwidth to take accountability for the underprepared students who are denied grant-funding because they don’t possess basic skills? Are college-ready students more deserving of federal dollars than those who are underprepared for college?

Already, a recent change to Pell grants is negatively impacting developmental students. In the past, students were allowed to receive funding for up to 18 semesters. Now, they are limited to 12 semesters. For many students who work while going to school or are required to take several semesters of remedial education, this reduction in aid is a huge barrier to degree attainment.

Institutions, as well as people like Petrilli, are evaluating their best response to the remediation crisis. For example, in Ohio, only 25 percent of residents hold a college degree. The state hopes to improve the number of grads by adopting a new formula that aligns the amount of funding four-year colleges receive with the amount of graduates they produce. The community colleges are also seeing a shift to performance-based funding but not at as high a rate as four-year colleges. Like Ohio, more states than not have transitioned, are transitioning, or are discussing transitioning away from enrollment-based funding to performance-based funding.

Another solution for some states is to simply get rid of remedial funding. In addition to Ohio’s performance-based funding, the state government will start phasing out funding for remedial classes in the 2014-15 school year and completely end funding by 2020. In Connecticut, a bill attempted to cut remedial courses and put those students who would have been placed in a remedial courses in college-level, credit-earning courses. A bill was ultimately signed into law which allowed students to take one remedial course.

There are a number of different strategies being proposed by states and colleges to cut costs in remedial education. Until the pipeline to college improves, however, the need for remediation will remain. Without careful analysis of tradeoffs, cutting funding, courses, and opportunity is not reform: it is giving up and hoping someone else will pick up the slack. We need a holistic solution for the short and long term. As the NCEE stated in their report this morning:

“The logical conclusion might be for community colleges to raise their expectations and for high schools to step up the rigor… but that would not help today’s large proportion of high school graduates who do not meet the criteria to enroll in credit-bearing college courses.”

What are solutions which impact pipeline preparation before college?

Remediation may never be completely eradicated, but improvement can be made in the K-12 to college pipeline to better prepare students for college from the start.

Continue reading at The Huffington Post

MOOCs are on the minds of many educators and students today as the new open source trend opens many discussions on what learning will look like in the 21st century. Technology can bring a free college course taught by the best of the best professors from universities like Stanford and Harvard right to your living room. The popularity of MOOCs has people asking, why pay for a college education when you can get one for free online?

If the demand for more online learning persists, so must the demand for affordable devices and services  In addition, students taking primarily online classes will have to have the initiative, determination, and follow through to get the experiences and networking they need to augment classroom learning with professional skills.   In the new world of learning, the power is in the student’s hands but that alone will not be enough.   Ingenuity, ambition, and the ability to have a strong track record will allow online students, or any student for that matter, to show how they have single-handedly crafted meaningful professional experiences to complement college learning.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

“The Professor’s Big Stage,” by Thomas Friedman. The New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/friedman-the-professors-big-stage.html?ref=opinion&_r=0>

“Data Caps Could Dim Online Learning’s Bright Future,” by By Benjamin Lennett and Danielle Kehl. The Chronicle.<http://chronicle.com/article/Caps-on-Data-Use-Dim-Online/137653/>

As many as 1.7 million first-year students will take a remedial course to learn the math, reading, or writing skills they need to enroll in a credit-earning college-level course. Of all remedial courses most students are remediated in math skills. Due to a variety of factors — class dynamics, curricula, instruction,  skill-level, academic support, financial standing, life — retaining and passing students in a remedial course is a major concern.

Colorado Community College System conducted a longitudinal remedial math study that tracked remedial math students for 4 years. They found that though the majority of students required remedial math, math had the lowest pass rate of all remedial classes.

• Only 8% of students who enrolled in remedial math had graduated after four years
• Unlike the findings of a national study, the majority exited the sequence due to withdrawal or failure to pass a course, rather than completing and failing to enroll in the next course
• More than 40% of CCCS remedial math completers did not attempt college math

How can we equip these students with the tools to stick with and pass a remedial class? You’ll know from my blog earlier this week that ideally I believe more resources should be used at the K12-level to address learning difficulties before students graduate from high school and enter college. However, eliminating the need for remediation will not happen over night. What can we do today for the students who are graduating from high school with the dream of graduating from college, but who don’t have the skills to do so?

Academic Coaching promotes student accountability, motivation, and follow-through. It asks the student to not only do their homework, but to make a commitment to studying, getting a tutor, finding a support system, and passing the class. A faculty member with Academic Coaching skills asks the struggling developmental student powerful questions that puts the student in the driver’s seat of their own learning and asks them to invest in their own success.  LifeBound is at the National Association of Developmental Education (NADE) Conference this week sharing the benefits of using Academic Coaching with developmental students with faculty from around the country. Today, Maureen Breeze is giving the session Academic Coaching for Hybrid, Online, and Self-Paced Math to train faculty to use academic coaching skills to inspire students to persevere and foster success in any level or mode of math class.

If you’re at the NADE conference is Denver, make sure to come say hello to LifeBound in the exhibit hall.

A new study finds that college students are not aggressively preparing for their careers while in college, and that their lack of career efforts may be seriously hurting their future job prospects, according to The Student Career Development Study.

The study also found that the majority of college students (95%) have a Facebook account, while only 34% of students have a LinkedIn account. College students see the value of having an internship — with over half of students having over three internships in college —  while 93 percent do not have an understanding of personal branding.

Is it the fault of the student that they are not actively pursuing their career while juggling deadlines for their history exam, their English paper, and their internship? Is it the fault of the university that the English teacher doesn’t make a connection between critical reading skills and the real world, the adviser doesn’t advise beyond the pinnacle goal of graduation day, or the business professor teaches theories without obvious ties to how they will help the student move from graduate to employed professional? Or, with the majority of students getting mentored on a profession by their parents (37 %), maybe it’s the parent’s fault?

Most likely, it’s no one person’s fault. The career game has changed, while the players have been slow to change with it. Look at the numbers in this study. We need to find a way to tap into the power of social media to boost employment, to use the tools in the university to prepare students for a career, and utilize the influence of parents to mentor students through the different phases in their lives.

We also need to look beyond the measurements of success in this study and, rather than asking how students can improve their branding, ask how we can optimize the college experience so students see the big picture, find their passion, and get inspired.

With high unemployment and college costs at an all-time high, we need to be as practical as we can with today’s students about how and what they learn and about how that learning is connected to their future course work, graduation, and their career and professional outcomes.  Academic coaching is the tool that can do just that. On February 27, Maureen Breeze and Mary Haynes will be presenting an Introduction to Academic Coaching at the preconference for the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) conference in Denver. For more information on attending the NADE event, call Brittany at 303-327-5688.

Find more interesting stats and the full study here: Are College Students Setting Themselves Up for Future Job Failure?

There are many things you can do to help ensure that your college application gives you the best chance at admission to your dream college. Making sure it’s on time, making sure you don’t have any embarrassing photos posted on your Facebook (about a quarter of all college admissions officers check your Facebook profile while considering your application), and watching out for spelling errors and other mistakes are all essential (see Emily Driscoll’s “Get Your College Apps in Order Now” for more tips and general advice). Your biggest opportunity to stand out, however, where you can really show who you are and why you’re applying, is through your application essay.

1. Brainstorm: This important pre-writing technique is one of the best ways to make your writing interesting, and yet it is horribly underused. Jon Small, vice president of College Prep at Veritas Prep, explains: “In order to really stand out, students will want to brainstorm several different angles of their personality and then flesh each one out in essay form for review by friends, family, and academic contacts” (cited by Driscoll). It’s the best-prepared essays that will make the most polished impression on admissions officers as they’re reading through essay after essay, so sit down and make an outline of all the things you might want to say about yourself, then choose a few of the best, most interesting ones to use in the finished work.

2. Make the essay a top priority: The essay is really the most important (and the most time-consuming) portion of the application process, so make sure that you give yourself enough time to complete it. Don’t skimp over the pre-writing and drafting process by churning it out at the last minute.

3. Write about things that are important to you. If you really care about what you’re writing, so will your audience. It’s easy to get caught up trying to imagine what the college would find particularly impressive or unique, especially since the essay prompt you get on the application form is usually pretty vague, at least until you start looking into postgraduate programs. The reason for this is that they want to know who you are and where your interests lie, so don’t stray into subjects that don’t fit the criteria.

4. Focus on what matters. When telling your story, it’s important to focus on the goal of your essay. To this end, emphasize the parts of your story or experience that relate to that goal and leave out the rest; these are the parts that will be most important to your readers. (This and the next two steps are adapted from James M. Lang’s article, “Helping Students to Tell Their Stories.”)

5. Use real experiences rather than personality traits. In other words, show don’t tell. You want the admissions committee to know who you are, and the best way to do that is actually to describe what you’ve done and what is was like. It also makes for more powerful writing.

6. Describe your goals for the future. Students who make clear goals and plans are more likely to do well in a college environment, so try to envision where you’ll be in five years, what goals you want to have accomplished and what important lesson you want to learn. Painting this kind of picture shows how serious you are about your endeavor. Then, connect your past experiences with your future goals by talking about how the college you’re applying to will help you move from one to the other.

7. Find good reviewers to help you analyze your essay’s effect. Any personal essay is a risky venture, for the simple reason that we often don’t know what we sound like when we’re writing in first person. Writers often come off as insincere, arrogant, self-deprecating, or even servile without that being their intention. For this reason, an application requires a second opinion even more than most other writing assignments. For more detailed information about tone and persona in application essays, see “The Genre of Self-Evaluation,” by Rachel Toor.

8. Talk to an advisor or tutor. Some high schools and colleges offer advisors specifically for helping with your application essays, but there are any number of teachers with experience in such writing who’d be willing to help you. Tutors can often point to things in your essay that aren’t working with more precision than a casual reviewer, and offer more helpful suggestions about how to improve it.

Most importantly, just write it, and if it isn’t all you had hoped it would be, do it again. Writing a captivating essay takes time, review, and multiple drafts. What are some other tips you have for writing a personal essay?

Grit.

What does it mean to you? Maybe you tapped into your grit to pass your college physics course. Or possibly to look for a new job or train for a race. Grit is a powerful soft skill that could stand between you and success in any area of your life, personal, academic, or professional.

At LifeBound we often talk about grit in our Academic Coaching Training and books for teens. We ask coaches to work with their students to help them tap into their intrinsic motivation, dig deep to see the power they have over their lives, and discover their grit. We also encourage educators and parents to use the power of grit in their own lives.

As people continue hunting for jobs, high school and college graduation rates dip, and new grads try to crawl out of debt, grit has become a popular trait in the post-recession American. The following are a few articles that can help the student, grad, or professional see the value of grit today:

• Back to School: Why Grit Is More Important Than Good Grades – Letting your kids struggle academically may the best way to help them succeed, by Paul Tough.
• How Important Is Grit in Student Achievement?  – When it comes to high achievement, grit may be as essential as intelligence, by Emily Hanford.
• Getting Grit — How educators can find grit in their own lives, by Kim Gilmer.
• Young College Grads Create Opportunity in a Challenging Economy — Stories of young college grads entering the world of work, by Carol Carter.

How do you define grit? How do you live with grit? Share your examples and rules to live with grit.

As many as 1.7 million first-year students will take a remedial course to learn the math, reading, or writing skills they need to enroll in a college-level course. Whether urban, rural, suburban, low-income, athletic, artistic, academic, high-achieving, or low-achieving, too many of today’s students aren’t prepared for the challenge of higher education.

Remediating underprepared students is not a solution in and of itself. It can afford amazing opportunities to students who only need a refresher, like the returning student or the student who slacked off her last year in high school. However, sending students to a remedial college course who do not have a foundation of basic skills often leads to failure. In the report “Saving Now and Saving Later: How High School Reform Can Reduce the Nation’s Wasted Remediation Dollars,” researchers outline the “Real Cost of Remedial Education.”

Cost to the Nation: An analysis by the advocacy group Alliance for Excellent Education estimates remedial classes cost $3.6 billion a year nationally.

Cost to the Economy: On average, those who have completed some college make $17,000 less than those with a bachelor’s degree. This amounts to less tax revenue and disposable income. It’s estimated that the U.S. would make $2 billion in additional earning if students who dropped out had instead completed their degrees at the same time as nonremedial students.

Cost to Federal and State Governments: Between 2003 and 2008, state governments spent $1.4 billion dollars and the federal government spent over $1.5 billion in grants to students who did not return to college the next year.

Cost to the Taxpayer: Taxpayers pay for students to learn the same material twice – once in high school and again in a remedial college course.

Cost to the Student: Students at 4-year colleges pay 42 percent of their college tuition and fees and students at two-year colleges pay 14 percent.

Most remedial classes don’t count toward graduation. If a student must complete several remedial classes before he can begin other coursework, it could add semesters and significant additional tuition costs to his college experience, not to mention lost time and money if the student drops out of college. Though many students choose higher education as a pathway to higher potential earnings, many choose to drop out due to seemingly temporary hurdles, like finances, failing grades, and unpreparedness.

Remedial classes have their place, but they are not beneficial for all students. The 1.7 million students who enroll in a remedial class each year tell us that it is becoming more and more common for students to leave high school without the basic reading, writing, and math skills it takes to enroll and succeed in a college-level course. If we want more college graduates, we need more focus on college preparedness.

At LifeBound we believe it’s never too early for students to start exploring their passions and interests that they can eventually align with a college major, certificate program, or career. Help students make connections between the choices they make today and the dreams they have for their future. Introduce them to positive role models, talk about the careers and salary opportunities of someone with an associate’s degree versus a high school diploma, and encourage them to find a tutor or peer to help them with subjects they are struggling in.

It’s summer and many new graduates are getting ready to make their first career move. Some grads are relocating to follow a dream or take an offered position. Others are searching locally or digitally for a career that will keep them close to home, while others are still brainstorming before making any decisions. Transitioning from school to life overnight can be stressful. All of a sudden new grads are faced with a new lifestyle full of adult freedoms, as well as adult pressures to hurry up and find a job. In addition to the new stresses of a transition, college grads may also face push-back from friends, family, bosses, and coworkers about how their choosing to approach the rest of their lives.

When you were choosing a major, did your friends, family, and teachers whole-heartedly support your decision? When you began a new relationship, did your friends and family support you from the get-go? Were your goals ever swayed by someone’s reaction to your decisions? At this uncertain time as a new grad, it can be especially confusing and angering to not have people supporting your decisions. After spending most of your life preparing for this moment, you still might not know where your career choices will ultimately take you, but you have an idea of how you want the next chapter in your life to go.

If you’re not getting support from friends and family to follow your dreams, know that it isn’t necessarily because you are making a bad decision. And, if it is because you are making a bad decision, it’s probably a mistake you will have to experience to understand — no matter how much those who care about you want to protect you from getting hurt. As you get closer to reaching your goals, stand firm. Fear, jealousy, experience, selfishness, etc. can all motivate people to try and discourage you from living a life they think you shouldn’t have. Take a risk, get out of your comfort zone, and follow your heart. There you will find yourself and what makes you happy, personally and professionally.