Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about ...]]> Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges.

Graduation rate calculations apply to a small fraction of our entire student population (about 15%). That is because this national measure focuses only on new students and only on those new students who register for a full-time course load. Thus, the graduation rate for Bristol Community College is 19%, the average of the 15 Massachusetts community colleges is 16%, and the national average is 22%. The business leaders who make up our boards of trustees would not tolerate such a dismal performance, if it actually measured community college performance accurately.

What is wrong with the use of graduation rates as the performance indicator for community colleges? We know that about 85% of all community college students work either full- or part-time; consequently, most do not register for a full load of courses. So the majority of our students do not fall into the graduation rate database. Consider, too, that even those entering students who begin full-time study cannot always maintain that ambitious course load. If students remain enrolled, but opt for a reduced course load, they are considered unsuccessful based on the criteria for measuring graduation rates. Similarly, if students excel in their first year and transfer immediately to a four-year institution, they also are marked against the community college that succeeded in preparing them for transfer.

It's more accurate to consider “Student Persistence” and “Student Success” in gauging the effectiveness of community colleges. For example, we have students who, because of their preparatory learning experience, transfer successfully before earning their associate degrees at Bristol. Shouldn’t we be praised for spurring student success instead of being castigated that they did not graduate on an arbitrary time frame? In addition, some of our students for personal reasons (such as employment schedules, child/spouse/parent care, health, finances, etc.), reduce their course load below full-time status.  These students continue to persist in their academic pursuits for their degrees. Whether they earn more than 30 credits (the halfway mark to an associate degree) or less, they continue on track despite formidable personal circumstances. Aren’t they to be commended?  Shouldn’t the college that makes this possible be seen as a success?

As a response to the terrible distortions about community colleges based solely on graduation rates, a national commission under U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has combined various categories of students to provide a more accurate measure of community college performance. The new national criteria for Student Success and Student Persistence now take into account across a six-year period: 1) student transfers; 2) students who have earned at least 30 credits and either remain enrolled or stop out temporarily; 3) students who have completed less than 30 credits but have not interrupted their studies; and, yes, 4) the traditional graduation rate (which we would never want to eradicate). Under this new cluster of criteria, the Student Success Rate for BCC (and all community colleges) jumps to nearly 80%!

Why do some influential voices continue to carp about community college graduation rates? Their fixation leads me to wonder about their motivation. Instead of celebrating the ability of students to use community college flexibility to fit higher education into their lives, these uninformed critics use our flexibility against us. If you encounter someone describing graduation rates as the only measure—and criticism—of community college performance, take the time to explain the other criteria that provide more accurate information about how well community colleges are really performing.

John J. Sbrega is president of Bristol Community College.

Related Posts:

Alignment Job: Community Colleges and Workforce Development

The Community's Colleges (pdf)

Transfer and Other Topics for Community Colleges (pdf)

Are Colleges Ready for Students? (pdf)

Sbrega on Community Colleges and Grad Rates, 2004 (pdf)

History of a Community College (pdf)

In a recent article in Inside Higher Education, transfer expert Marc Cutright of the University of North Texas writes about the growing importance that four-year colleges and universities should place on students transferring from community college. Public colleges, led by community colleges, grant more than a half million associate degrees annually and the number grew ...]]>

In a recent article in Inside Higher Education, transfer expert Marc Cutright of the University of North Texas writes about the growing importance that four-year colleges and universities should place on students transferring from community college. Public colleges, led by community colleges, grant more than a half million associate degrees annually and the number grew by 27% over a decade. But what about that other sector seeing large enrollment growth: for-profit colleges?

In a year of generally bad press for for-profit colleges—ranging from high student loan default rates and declining confidence on Wall Street—the sector's enrollment is rising, particularly at the two-year level. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2009 6% of two-year enrollments were in for-profits, up from 5% the year before.

When you consider that for-profit two-year programs have a 60% graduation rate, compared with the 22% graduation rate for public community colleges, for-profits would only need a 27% share of students to produce as many associate degrees as community colleges. If for-profits increase their market share by 1% each year, this would happen in as few as 20 years.

Last year's was the largest single-year increase that the for-profits have seen in recent years, so that kind of continued growth is unlikely. However it does highlight the fact that this student population is growing and will needs to be considered as well.

The U.S. once had the world’s highest percentage of adults with a college degree, but has now dropped to 10th, according to the OECD. In an attempt to reverse this slide, a number of policymakers and foundations have sought to make increased degree attainment a national priority. President Obama has articulated the goal that America ...]]>

The U.S. once had the world’s highest percentage of adults with a college degree, but has now dropped to 10th, according to the OECD. In an attempt to reverse this slide, a number of policymakers and foundations have sought to make increased degree attainment a national priority. President Obama has articulated the goal that America will regain the world’s highest rate of degree attainment and challenged every American to complete at least one year of postsecondary education. The Lumina Foundation for Education, likewise, has set a goal to increase the percentage of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials from the under 40% today to 60% by the year 2025, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aims to double the number of low-income adults who earn postsecondary degrees or other credentials by age 26.

Increasing the number and percentage of Americans with postsecondary education will require a number of strategies, including increasing capacity at colleges and universities and providing access to high-quality college education for more Americans.

But these ambitious goals cannot be met without also dramatically increasing the completion rates at our public colleges and universities. College completion rates in the U.S. are troubling: At public, four-year institutions, fewer than 55% of students earn a degree within six years, while at public, two-year institutions, fewer than 30% of students earn a degree within three years, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Overall, only half of the nation’s students will ever receive the degree they sought to earn. These lost students, who have already demonstrated their desire for postsecondary education and made steps toward reaching it, hold significant potential for being among America’s critical next generation of college-educated workers.

States are the key

Almost three quarters (74%) of America’s college students are enrolled in public institutions of higher education, according to the U.S. Education Department. Since states often have statutory control over public higher education and provide the largest single source of funding, state leaders hold critical levers—and are uniquely accountable—for reshaping policies and improving outcomes in public higher education.

While implementing dramatic reforms may seem daunting to state policymakers in the midst of budget crises, focusing on college completion is critical for states, even—and perhaps especially—in these challenging economic times. First, increasing completion rates will allow America to meet the needs of a new economy that rewards knowledge and innovation. In the next 10 years, more than 60% of jobs will require a college education; indeed, the jobs currently growing the fastest require either an associate or bachelor’s degree or a certificate, according to research at Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce. Second, college completion can bring positive outcomes to individual students, including increased wages and benefits, plus non-monetary benefits such as better health and better outcomes for future generations, according to 2007 College Board research by Sandy Baum and Jennifer Ma. The current economic crisis has demonstrated the importance of education for individuals and families: Unemployment rates are more than twice as high for those with just a high school diploma (10.9%) than with those with a bachelor’s degree or higher (4.7%), reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Third, these individual benefits translate to significant societal and state benefits, including increased tax revenues and decreased reliance on state services, broader civic participation and increases in the earnings of all workers as overall educational attainment rates rise.[1] College completion is truly a tide that raises all boats.

Joining with other national groups in making college completion a priority, Complete College America (CCA) has set a goal that by 2020, six in 10 young adults in the U.S. will have a degree or certificate, up from the 38% of adults ages 25-34 hold who now hold a college degree, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2008 American Community Survey.[2] Such a large increase in completion rates and educational attainment will require more than tinkering around the edges; we need major changes in the way public higher education conceives of and delivers postsecondary education to today’s generation of students—we need innovation at scale.

Bold action

The first step to enabling these bold changes is improved data collection, without which policymakers are hampered in their efforts to analyze barriers and identify opportunities for improvement, show progress over time, and hold individuals and institutions accountable. Much of the data collected today (particularly by the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Data Systems, or IPEDS) fail to adequately capture college completion rates for huge numbers of America’s students—especially part-time and transfer students. Nor does IPEDS allow for disaggregation by ethnicity, income or by age groups, all of which are necessary in order to close gaps and ensure that postsecondary success rates are keeping up with the dramatic demographic shifts taking place across the country. Collecting data that are comparable across institutions and states will also help to identify barriers to student achievement and guide actions that might improve student success. In addition to completion, these data should include measures of progress and the intermediate milestones that research has shown predict student success in earning a degree or certificate.

In addition to collecting and analyzing the data, a number of other state policy levers are critical for driving improvements in college completion. States have the opportunity to influence policy by using performance funding, by transforming the delivery of developmental (remedial) education, and restructuring the delivery models of higher education to meet the needs of today’s new generation of students—both young and adult. [See “Putting Money Where the Mouth Is Ways to Build Momentum for College Completion,” The New England Journal of Higher Education, Dennis Jones.]

Performance funding ties institutional appropriations to outcomes, not simply to enrollments, and allows states to align their fiscal policies with their statewide goals for workforce development and economic prosperity. For example, states can provide funding based on the number of courses completed or the number of degrees and credentials earned. While the use of performance funding has been controversial and its implementation uneven, states can emphasize specific goals by providing funding incentives in areas such as the success of low-income or underrepresented students or degrees produced in key industry sectors such as health care, engineering, and technology.[3]

States must also take on remedial education; while evidence on the effectiveness of remedial education is mixed, for far too many students, it represents a dead end. Students who need remediation are required to take courses that do not count toward their degrees, adding time and expense to their studies with dismal results. More than 40% of all students (and 60% of community college students) enter postsecondary education needing remediation, but fewer than 25% of students who enter remedial courses ever earn a degree or certificate, according to research by Thomas Bailey of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Innovative programs in community colleges have shown that remediation can be improved by targeting it through improved diagnosis of student needs, tailoring it to focus only on those skills that students need, and helping move students as quickly as possible into courses that count towards a degree. Specifically, remediation can be embedded within credit-bearing courses, technology can target specific academic deficiencies, and anchor assessments can be performed while students are still in high school to accelerate their progress once they arrive in college (e.g., the California State University “Early Start” program and Tennessee’s community colleges’ implementation of the National Center for Academic Transformation remedial education models).

Finally, public colleges and universities must restructure the delivery of higher education to meet the needs of today’s students. No longer does the majority of students attend full-time, live on campus, and complete a degree within four years; instead, most students are attending school part-time while juggling families and work. Promising models suggest that restructuring the delivery of postsecondary education with a focus on transparency, consistency and structure leads to significantly better outcomes for students. These models use block scheduling, offer degree programs instead of courses, take advantage of the known benefits of cohorts and learning communities and integrate remediation into credit-bearing or career-oriented courses.[4]

Each state faces its own set of demographic and economic challenges, but increasing educational attainment is a common goal for state policymakers as they seek to ensure the future health of their economies. Twenty-two states have joined the Complete College America Alliance of States in order to elevate college completion in their policy agendas and develop plans to make dramatic increases in attainment over the next decade. These and other states have also been leaders in helping their public colleges make improvements in access and completion through participation in national initiatives like Achieving the Dream and Access to Success. These complementary efforts have shown promising results, yet in light of the promise postsecondary education holds for each individual, family, and community—and to meet our goals as a nation—there is much left to do.

Stan Jones is founder and president of Complete College America. David Soo is state policy analyst at Complete College America.

Endnotes

[1] Sandy Baum and Jennifer Ma note in their report Education Pays: “Estimates suggest that controlling for other factors, a 1 percentage point increase in the proportion of the population holding a four-year college degree leads to a 1.9% increase in the wages of workers without a high school diploma and a 1.6% increase in the wages of high school graduates.”

[2] No reliable national data are available on the percentage of adults who hold a postsecondary certificate. The president and other national organizations, including CCA, believe that completion should be defined as a earning a bachelor’s or associate degree, or a certificate of at least one year in length that has demonstrated labor market value (Bosworth, 2010; Carnevale, Strohl & Smith, 2009; Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, 2005; Wheary & Orozco, 2010).

[3] Under its current performance funding system, Indiana rewards increases in the on-time graduation rates at public colleges and universities, increases in transfer rates for community colleges, and increases in the numbers of low-income graduates. Ohio has also phased in a performance funding system that utilizes different formulas for each sector (community colleges, branch campuses, and research universities) and incorporates progress indicators for community colleges.

[4] For examples of successful highly structured and accelerated programs, see the City University of New York (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP); Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program (ALP); and the Tennessee Technology Centers.

Editor’s Note: The Summer 2000 issue of Connection, NEJHE’s predecessor, included a series of pieces headlined “Charter Colleges: Evolution of a Plan,” exploring whether public colleges could operate more efficiently and produce higher quality educational results if they were freed from the controls imposed by state bureaucracies.

Community colleges are under increasing pressure today from a ...]]>

Editor’s Note: The Summer 2000 issue of Connection, NEJHE’s predecessor, included a series of pieces headlined “Charter Colleges: Evolution of a Plan,” exploring whether public colleges could operate more efficiently and produce higher quality educational results if they were freed from the controls imposed by state bureaucracies.

Community colleges are under increasing pressure today from a number of directions. Student demand is at an all-time high, fueled by demographics, student and employer need for new and increased skills; structural changes in labor markets have pushed the under- or unemployed to community colleges to acquire new job skills; and students who would have gone to four-year colleges are drawn to the lower-priced community colleges.

At the same time, community colleges face significant limitations in resources and institutional flexibility, as state and local aid has failed keep up with current needs, much less allow for growth.

Another serious handicap faced by community colleges is that state regulations on these two-year institutions, particularly in bellwether states like California, remain considerably more restrictive than they are for four-year institutions, while extensive and inflexible work rules limit institutional flexibility.

Even as recent U.S. presidents have urged Americans to obtain education beyond high school, community colleges are roundly criticized for lackluster student persistence and low graduation rates despite the fact that the proportion of entering students needing remedial work continues to increase.

Finally, we don’t really know how well community colleges are doing their job because, with few exceptions, there are no meaningful measures of student performance.

Lesson from K-12

One way forward from this situation may be to apply a reform that is bringing improvement to K-12 schools around the nation: the charter school movement, in which educational entrepreneurs and stakeholders establish and operate new schools for their communities.

Charter schools offer increased performance and accountability in exchange for autonomy and flexibility. The "charter" establishing each such school, defined by state law, is a performance contract detailing the school's mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment and ways to measure success. Most charter schools are established to increase operating autonomy, serve special groups, and/or realize an educational vision/mission. Like community colleges, charter-school enrollment is by choice. Charter schools typically do not offer tenure. They set their own compensation plans, have highly flexible work rules, encourage innovative educational practices and, most importantly, have a core mission of increasing opportunities for learning and access to quality education. This core mission is enforced with rigorous assessment of student learning.

Indeed, while much remains to be done to refine and assess the charter school movement in grades K-12, interest in the opportunities offered by this movement continues to grow. The number of charter schools in the United States has risen dramatically, from 50 in 1993 to over 5,000 in 2009, according to the Center for Educational Reform. Massachusetts, with its 65 charter schools enrolling nearly 26,000 students continues to be the leader in New England. Where a charter school differs from traditional education is in the flexibility and responsiveness of the organization to it mission and its heavy emphasis on rigorous assessment of learning.

Applied to CCs

In many respects, community colleges, with their open enrollment policies, share the charter school movement’s mission of increased educational opportunity for all students, particularly those who are socially or educationally disadvantaged or who have restricted educational options. Like many public K-12 schools, community colleges often face a diverse and sometimes daunting set of restrictions on their ability to accomplish their missions. Like most charter schools, community colleges are likely to serve minority, underrepresented and disadvantaged students, more so than other postsecondary institutions.

Community colleges are particularly vulnerable to a combination of restrictive operating options and, currently, reduced public funding, as states react to reduced revenues. In California, for example, community colleges operate under highly detailed statutes and operating policies, union work rules, and budgetary and administrative restrictions; state statutes governing community colleges run to 220 two-columned pages. (In contrast, the California State University system is governed by a mere 70 pages of laws and the University of California by only 25 pages, despite the fact that the state spends 9% more for the Cal State system than for the community colleges and 300% more for the UC system.) At the same time, community colleges are being asked to reduce annual operating expenditures by 12% to 18% in the face of reduced state support. Meanwhile, community college trustees are mired in regulatory detail. Rather than delegate minor decisions to college administrators, they are required to approve budget items such as student trips, student conference attendance, even expenditures under $200. The flipside of this highly micromanaged regulatory structure is that highly paid college presidents and other administrators have little decision-making authority and must seek trustee approval for decisions of trivial consequence.

Like many public schools that are under stress to perform in challenging circumstances, community colleges sometimes encounter perverse incentives, such as the need to reward faculty and staff based on seniority rather than productivity, and the need to follow onerous bureaucratic procedures in order to make simple decisions.

Assessment challenge

While assessment continues to challenge K-12 education, community colleges are even farther behind in meaningful assessment of student learning. For example, in California there is no standard measurement of student success among the state’s 112 community colleges. Rather, thousands of individual faculty members develop their own courses in their subjects and, using thousands of different tests, determine which students have learned the subject matter and can move on to the next level. There is no standard measure of what a student should know after completing introductory biology, college algebra, American History, or sociology. In short there are no hard measures of accountability. Instead, California measures success by how many students stay in the course until the end of the term (retention) and how many get a grade of C or better (academic success).

If a community college had the option to operate as a charter school, what might it do to directly address the needs of its students and measurably improve student success?

The primary advantages of the charter school model for a community college are the opportunity to improve accountability, efficiency, personnel policy and resource use. Accomplishing all these goals would involve assessment of not just learning outcomes, but also of institutional operations. And institutions would be better able to allocate resources to support these objectives.

Academic operations could benefit from a variety of inputs. These would include: re-envisioning assessment of educational outcomes through consultation with parties such as regional accreditors, state authorities and testing/assessment experts. Other innovations might include hiring institutional staff such as a dean of assessment to design cutting-edge entry and exit assessment measures and an expert in institutional research, who would, for example, create a new transcript with more detailed incoming and outgoing assessment scores. Additional reforms could incorporate articulation agreements with state institutions; the close evaluation and monitoring of dropouts and graduates (as well as time to degree completion); and perhaps cooperation with other institutions to create a curriculum that includes standardized “master courses” and hybrid (online and onsite) course delivery. Finally, a charter college could have flexible course offerings instead of standardized academic schedules. Courses can be made intensive in terms of both time and content, allowing students and faculty to focus directly and immediately on accomplishment of learning objectives and competencies, especially in basic skills and general education requirements.

At same time, operating costs can be assessed and revised using measures that are integrated with academic assessment practices. For example: instructors/faculty can be hired on five-year renewable contracts; faculty compensation and contractual arrangements can be based on measurable outcomes; and administrative and staff operations and expenses can be based on zero-based budgeting processes that incorporate student success measures. In addition, in light of evidence that committed faculty contribute to student persistence, faculty assignments could incorporate advising with teaching responsibilities, and make flexible but attractive (and cost-effective) work arrangements such as proportional positions (e.g. two-thirds or three-quarter time with proportional benefits) to attract instructors who are dedicated teachers. Administrators (and instructors) can be more entrepreneurial when resources are flexible, for example, having hiring, contractual and compensation flexibility with appropriate and identifiable incentives and expanded professional opportunities among instructional staff to support an institutional culture of vitality and mission-awareness.

In a society that needs more and better education, particularly in “grades 13 and 14,” the charter school model holds much promise for community colleges—those public institutions that serve communities and students by preparing students for employment and further education and, increasingly, provide students the opportunity to address educational needs not accomplished in K-12. The combination of improved accountability and autonomy in resource use that is the foundation of the charter school model allows for targeted educational efforts and clear institutional focus on student success. The flexibility of resource use built into the charter school model supports a continuing culture of dedication and vitality among faculty and staff—one that, in turn, supports student engagement and institutional effectiveness. The charter school model supports the best aspects of today’s community colleges and provides opportunity to improve their performance as they face increasing challenges and demands.

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Jane Sjogren is an educator, economist and consultant. James Fay is academic vice president at Cerro Coso College in California.