Higher Education Policy Must Support Today’s Students, Including Those Transferring Schools, Witnesses Tell Committee
WASHINGTON—To meet future workforce demands, colleges and universities, states, and the federal government need policies that eliminate barriers to college completion for today’s students, members learned at a House education committee hearing today.
“Today’s college students rely on diverse ways of learning, and institutions are exploring new models of education, but students face substantial barriers to completing their degrees and graduating as they move through the higher education system,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “To ensure that we are preparing sufficient college graduates to meet workforce demands, we need to eliminate the barriers that prevent too many students from earning a degree and securing their place in the middle class.”
By 2018, we will need 22 million new workers with college degrees, but current graduation rate projections indicate that we will fall short of that need by three million people, according to a recent study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Federal policy must be responsive to our country’s changing student population, in which more students are taking different pathways to a college degree.
“The picture of the ‘traditional’ student population is as diverse as it is evolving,” testified Joann A. Boughman, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Maryland, the largest of 12 institutions in the University System of Maryland (USM). “Today’s student is less likely an 18-year-old first-time, full-time, freshman taking up residence in a campus dormitory. More and more often we see students in multiple roles, including the part-time adult learner commuting to college in the evening hours. They are veterans with multiple deployments in their immediate past or individuals who work full-time and have dependents at home.”
The USM has developed the Articulation System for Maryland Colleges and Universities (ARTSYS), which aids students in transferring between Maryland’s public institutions of higher education without losing credits. When students lose credits in the transfer process, taxpayers and students pay for repeated classes and students waste time, making them significantly less likely to complete their studies and graduate.
Drawing from ARTSYS and other similar state policies, yesterday Rep. Miller introduced the Transferring Credits for College Completion Act of 2014 (H.R. 4348), which aims to lower costs for students and taxpayers by increasing transparency and creating guaranteed pathways to graduation. With the protections offered by this bill, students who can transfer all of their community college credits to a four-year institution could save an estimated $18,000, compared to those who need to start over after switching schools.
“Too many students work hard to reach college only to find that they are unprepared and cannot enroll in college-level coursework,” said Miller. “They start at community colleges to avoid burdensome debt, only to find that their credits will not transfer to their chosen four-year college and they need to repeat courses. They are forced to take classes in subject areas they have already mastered and in which they have real-world experience. We need to eliminate these barriers to completion and empower students to complete their degrees and enter the workforce.”
Both states and institutions have a role to play in helping develop new policies that help more contemporary students complete their college degrees. For example, current remediation approaches present a substantial hurdle to college completion, particularly for low-income students, resulting in high drop-out and failure rates.
“In redesigned programs throughout the country, institutions are shifting remedial education from a prerequisite requirement to a ‘co-requisite,’ where students receive support while enrolled in the gateway courses,” testified Stan Jones, president of Complete College America. “By delivering co-requisite remediation with more time on task and just-in-time support, we place far more students into their programs of study and eliminate attrition points—the moments where students are most likely to fall out of the system. Additionally, these programs are achieving astounding results, often two, three, and four times that of the traditional model.”
Competency-Based Education programs may offer another avenue to prevent wasted time and money by focusing on the self-paced attainment of competencies in a variety of subject areas, rather than the accrual of credit hours. In addition, we need policies that better support today’s diverse student body, including veterans who return with on-the-job experience, adults retraining for new careers, community college students, and online learners.
“While it is essential that individual courses or credits transfer, it has become obvious that the successful matriculation of students through higher education also requires investment in student services, activities, and cultural engagement by the institutions,” said Boughman. “Support for students across the full spectrum of higher education, including those first-time, full-time freshmen, will lead to successful retention and completion for students challenged by the cost of higher education and competing family and work needs. Creation and implementation of policies and processes that make those pathways both clear and smooth, while allowing for the flexibility required by individual students and degree programs, will provide the vibrant higher education environment necessary to produce the next generation of critical and creative thinkers our workforce now demands.”
Click here for more information on the Transferring Credits for College Completion Act of 2014 (H.R. 4348).
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