Under-Prepared Students Frustrating Iowa Community Colleges

Under-Prepared Students
Frustrating Iowa Community Colleges

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s community colleges are frustrated with the number of high school graduates who aren’t prepared for college, according to a copyright story in The Des Moines Register.

Nearly one-third of freshmen at the state’s community colleges took at least one remedial class last fall, with 56.8 percent receiving such poor scores on admissions exams that they were encouraged to take one or more remedial classes, according to a survey by the newspaper.

“I just think it’s unfortunate that such a large percentage of students who arrive at our door are in need of additional remediation to come up to the college level,’’ said M.J. Dolan, executive director of the Iowa Association of Community College Trustees.

The Alliance for Excellent Education, which studies high school quality, estimated in 2006 that the U.S. loses $3.7 billion a year on ill-prepared high school graduates. That includes the costs for remedial coursework and the loss of earning potential from college dropouts.

Iowa loses about $53 million annually, the alliance estimated.

The proportion of Iowa students who take remedial classes is not unusual. Nationally, 26.3 percent of full-time community college freshmen took remedial courses in the 2003-04 school year, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Advocates have pushed for more cooperation between high schools and community colleges to lower the number of students taking remedial classes.

“We just didn’t do a good job of helping students, parents, counselors, teachers understand what it takes to be successful in college,’’ said Laurance Warford of the League for Innovation in the Community College.

Community colleges don’t track the age of students taking remedial courses, but some state education officials say some of them don’t come directly from high school.

If students don’t come directly from high school, “you’re going to get rusty’’ academically, said Chuck Hinz, dean of learning services at Kirkwood Community College.

Technology also is being blamed for some of the deficiencies.

Laura Browne, associate dean of learning services at the Iowa Valley Community College District, said many incoming students need remedial reading and writing classes because they have spent so much time using grammatical shorthand to blog, send text messages and e-mail.

“They don’t know how to write complete sentences,’’ she said. “Spelling is a problem.’’

Many college officials aren’t blaming high schools for students needing remedial classes.

“I don’t believe high school’s primary purpose is to prepare students for college,’’ said Hinz, the Kirkwood Community College dean. “I think just to say high schools need to do a better job is oversimplifying things.’’

Community colleges are working with students to make sure they’re better prepared for college and if they need remedial classes, they pay for classes that will count toward graduation.

Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo started a program in 2005 with the Waterloo public schools that asked high school sophomores to take a test to assess their abilities.

After taking the tests, students can alter their classes they take as juniors and seniors, said Dave Ball, admissions director at Hawkeye.  

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