There is an article in the NYT today regarding universities integrating on-line education, focusing on remedial training.
I was struck by the statement: “Nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States arrive on campus needing remedial work before they can begin regular credit-bearing classes.”
I am sure you education-focused readers are aware of this, but I was taken aback. What is wrong with K-12 that the need exists? Just as bad, why do the universities (especially the public funded ones) enroll unqualified students in the first place?
What a waste of resources – and a definite impact on the pathetic college graduation rates.
What happened to the mission of the Community College to bridge the gap for the students that were motivated but had not mastered the prerequisites?
MOOCs may be a modern day answer (or part of it), but it seems like a hard review of the missions of the various elements of our education system are in order as well.
Gary, your supposition that we might be aware of this is correct. The core problem is that education fails a certain % of students from the earliest beginnings, and can’t catch up during ensuing years, so the problem is passed up the ladder, eventually reaching the universities.
And then the buck is passed down from the universities all the way to day care, head start and prenatal care. There are real problems that as a society we have failed to deal with, many of which stem from the impact of “bad living and learning conditions for children”.
There are also real problem with our educational system meeting the needs of ALL students. Both translate into opportunities for new educational tools and theories.
Interestingly enough, a big issue for Carnegie Mellon when they were deciding on who would be the focus for their “enhanced university 101 level online support” (read online education) program that Kris and I heard about in person from the designer, was “how do we deal with remedial needs”.
Eventually they realized that their adaptive algorithms would work for a very broad range of students, so they designed the course to cover AP HS students, CC students, and University students in one big adaptive package.
Yes, remedial education is kind of the “way into” the educational establishment for support of online learning, as they are all under pressure in Admin offices, to fix this problem somehow. It really messes with their achievement reports.
Developmental education is also “not for credit” meaning the tuition costs for parents and students is an additional burden to achieving a college education for students not successful in the traditional k-12 system.