While we know that hard work and persistence are essential to success, we also know that opportunity and access are the true keys to student persistence and achievement. The modern community college was established in all states following passage of the GI Bill, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of vets entering American higher education institutions. The Truman Commission recommended the establishment of public open access colleges across the nation to enable access and opportunity for all Americans.
The 1960s saw the creation of more than 500 of these new “open door community colleges,” also widely known as “democracy’s college.” The result was a dramatic increase in the “college going” population.
But it soon became obvious that many of the new enrollees were missing fundamentals needed for academic success. The result was the establishment of “remedial courses” in English, reading and mathematics. These courses quickly became the most offered courses in the new community colleges.
I investigated the “effectiveness” of these compensatory offerings, seeking to identify colleges with success records in helping these students accomplish their remedial work and progress into general education courses. A number of “successful” colleges were identified. Sadly, we found that the attrition rate in these courses was simply atrocious. We could not find one college that could document the successful progression of students from remedial to general education courses. The president of the American Association of Junior Colleges (AAJC) remarked that the challenge now was to help community colleges “make good on the promise of the open door.”
My study, “SALVAGE, REDIRECTION OR CUSTODY: Remedial Education in the Community College,” was published by the AAJC in 1968, more than 50 years ago. Since then, community colleges have been working hard, with major support from a variety of national foundations to address high attrition and low achievement in so-called “developmental” courses.
In 1985, President Robert McCabe and Provost Eduardo Padron of Miami-Dade College (MDC) announced that MDC would embrace student success as much as opportunity. Many presidents were bothered with this goal, pointing out that most of the students attending community colleges were working students, single moms and almost all were first generation. Most educators were also of the view that the colleges served the goal of access and opportunity. Not many were willing to look beyond opportunity and examine achievement.
The faculty and staff at MDC demonstrated that an open door college can admit all comers and still provide the faculty and staff support needed to facilitate higher course completion, improved persistence to graduation and major improvements in student transfer to four-year colleges.
