Success in College Requires Structure, Support, and K-12 Foundations
The country’s largest university system, the California State University (CSU) is three years away from its deadline to improve graduation rates and eliminate degree-completion disparities between disadvantaged and underrepresented students and their more fortunate peers. Other large higher-education systems are developing similar agendas. These laudable goals are often couched in terms of “student success,” but college success is about more than statistics that incentive-conscious bureaucracies can engineer. The plain fact is that many students arrive to college woefully unprepared, the system isn’t structured for them to catch up, and too many students carry further burdens of work and family commitments on top of school.
Science and engineering fields like physics, which I teach, require solid mathematical skills rooted in K-12 material. Attempting physics without thoroughly understanding high school math is akin to reading "Don Quixote" in the original before mastering Spanish grammar and vocabulary. Alas, ill-prepared students often slide by on partial credit for half-correct (i.e., wrong) answers – even in college! The consequences of these preparation deficits only become more apparent as students keeping getting passed along in colleges that are not structured to help them catch up.
Well-meaning faculty insist that we should not write off the possibility of catching up, and that believing otherwise is tantamount to surrender in the face of inequity. Their optimism is not wholly unfounded: people can indeed fill knowledge gaps with sufficient effort, and there will always be a few fortunate individuals with the talent, focus, and support to do so quickly. For most students, however, a fifteen-week semester is insufficient time to repair a weak foundation in high school algebra while simultaneously learning college physics – especially students with family obligations and/or jobs outside of school.
Taking disadvantage and its consequences seriously means accepting that there are no quick fixes. Students with substantial preparation deficits need a gradual curriculum that does not fit into state-mandated goals of 4-year graduation with a budget-conscious 120 credit hours. Ideally, any underprepared student wishing to attempt advanced courses would first get a few years of preparatory coursework to master what was missed in high school, along with financial support sufficient to devote their time and effort to studying rather than outside employment. If students lack the time to study, instructional investments will not pay off.
Ideal conditions are rarely available, however. What is on offer is a typical science curriculum that assumes decent high school algebra skills, starts with calculus at the level of common textbooks, and proceeds through standard topics that graduate schools expect students to know, alongside the laboratory and data-analysis skills that employers need. This works well for students with reasonable high school preparation and the time and flexibility to focus on college, but not for the students whose struggles depress graduation rates.
If the public will not accept slower-moving degree programs, another possibility is to supplement the curriculum with intensive small-group tutorials – ideally with no more than three students per instructor – tailored to students’ specific needs. These tutoring sessions could be made mandatory for receiving financial assistance sufficient for students to devote all their time to college. Small-group tutoring is the most effective known educational method, and it is the default at Oxford and Cambridge. Alas, it is also the most expensive educational method. (Unlike most universities, Oxford and Cambridge have a thousand years’ worth of compound interest on their endowments).
I foresee no fiscal windfalls enabling us to support students thusly. Instead, the talk on campus increasingly turns to positive messaging and insistence that students will succeed if only we project enough confidence. We seem to be at the “It will work as long as everyone believes!” stage of social reform. It’s the equivalent of a faith-based initiative, and my institution is three years from the promised reckoning.
What students need is a K-12 system that instills crucial foundational skills, so that preparation deficits do not monopolize universities’ attention. Meanwhile, underprepared students need something other than the structure in which they’re currently being passed along. And even the well-prepared need financial aid so that they can actually leverage their preparation by devoting their time to studying. Finally, the American economy needs confidence that resources earmarked for science and engineering programs are really spent cultivating skills rather than merely conferring credentials. We should invest those resources in building educational foundations the old-fashioned way: from the beginning.
