Advocate Online

The Dialogue Question:
Should remedial classes be limited to community colleges?

Yes, four-year colleges and universities should be focused on quality education not remediation.

We live in a competitive world and our institutions of higher education must focus on developing competitive college graduates. Remediation at the university level wastes much needed resources on students who should be prepared before they arrive at a four-year college.

The inadequate preparation of students entering college has been well documented over the past decade, with some studies reporting that 40 percent of entering students will take at least one remedial course in college. In some ways more alarming, The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, a report from the National Center for Education Statistics, found that the average literacy of college-educated Americans declined significantly from 1992 to 2003.

This poor level of education quality leaves our students at a competitive disadvantage when compared to college graduates of other nations and seriously impacts the economic future of our youth as they face the most internationally and technologically competitive era in history.

We need to make our universities more competitive in the world education market. This is not possible when our universities are challenged with providing remedial training to students before advanced concepts can be introduced. Community colleges are designed to prepare students for the working world and advanced study at universities. Let the community colleges perform the tasks they were designed to fulfill and and allow colleges and universities to get on with their work.

If students are not prepared for the rigors of university instruction, we should support them in community colleges.

* William Figg, a retired U.S. Army major, teaches computer information systems at Dakota State University. He is a member of the South Dakota Education Association Council of Higher Education and serves on the council's negotiating committee.

No, sometimes a four-year college is the only institution available to a student.

Some state legislatures are telling their universities to send all remedial students to community colleges. Fortunately, this has not yet happened in my state.

My heart says, “If there is a nearby community college, by all means, let the student who needs remediation go to that community college.” There, the student should find significantly smaller classes, usually taught by trained and competent teachers.

As a teacher who has taught in high school, a four-year private liberal arts college, state university, and now a community college, I have seen students start at a significantly low level of remedial math, and repair the gaps in their previous education while progressing slowly but surely up through the math they need. Many remedial students then transfer to the university with no problems. So, remediation at the community college does work, and I wish all students needing remediation in reading, writing, or mathematics could go to a community college.

But to require the student to travel many miles to a community college when a nearby state university can provide similar classes is cruel. A few students can get their remediation through community college online venues, but much of needed remediation comes through person-to-person contact, watching eyes and explaining things in new ways when a flicker of doubt is observed.

Yes, a high school diploma should mean quite a bit more than it sometimes does. Yes, students should remember their algebra over the 10-year period between high school and the time they finally are able to go to university, but that is not reality.

So I am not the person to advocate that remedial classes be limited strictly to the community college.

* Connie Buller teaches mathematics at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska. She is president of NEBMATYC (Nebraska Math Teachers at Two Year Colleges) and co-chair of the placement and assessment committee of American Math Teachers of Two Year Colleges.