At the request of the Committee on Higher and Professional Education the Office of Higher Education (OHE) has prepared the following report on remedial education in higher education. The report presents definitions that will set the framework for the body of the report, looks at national and New York State information, and addresses issues of quality and cost as they relate to remediation in higher education. By design the report does not address any of the other many issues associated with the current, complex debate about remediation in higher education.

Institutions use different methods to implement the components of remedial/developmental educational programs. Most programs will include assessment and placement; curriculum design and delivery; support services; and evaluation.

There are many different opinions regarding the definition of remedial education in college. Colleges and universities refer to remedial courses, developmental courses and academic support services and those phrases have different meanings on different campuses. The December 1998 report of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, College Remediation: What It Is/ What It Costs/ What's at Stake, links this lack of clarity to the fact that "there are no consistent standards about what constitutes 'college-level' work." The report further recognizes that who needs remediation is often determined by an individual institution's admissions standards. Standards for remediation vary within sets of institutions with similar missions, and in institutions that do not have an open-admissions policy, " . . . students who take remediation have already met the institutions' regular admissions requirements."

There are also disagreements about the use of the term "remedial education." That which some institutions call remedial, others will call developmental. In fact, developmental education is more frequently used to encompass a much broader context that includes issues of student preparation, pedagogical strategies and the study of how students learn.

College Remediation "defines remedial education as encompassing those courses and support services in basic academic skills which address the needs of a diverse population of underprepared students." For the purposes of the opportunity programs that SED administers, the phrase "and for which no college credit is awarded" would be added. For the purpose of this report, a remedial course is defined as a "course that concentrates on the acquisition of knowledge at pre-college levels. Such courses do not carry college credit." These non-credit-bearing courses will most often count as part of a student's course load for the purpose of determining full-time status. Remedial courses may be taught by full-time faculty or by adjunct faculty.

In addition to courses that have as their sole objective teaching pre-collegiate knowledge and skills, colleges also provide students with course work that is developmental. Developmental or supportive courses are courses that combine pre-college and college-level material with credit normally awarded for that part of the course that is college-level work. Such a course will have more classroom/contact hours for the student than a standard college course for the same credits. Like remedial coursework, the credits or credit equivalents generated by developmental courses are used in determining a student's full-or part-time status, and, full-time or adjunct faculty may teach the courses.

Academic Support Services

In addition to coursework, colleges and universities provide students in a remedial/development program with an array of other academic support services including tutoring, academic advisement, note taking and study-skills workshops and orientation seminars. Institutions may provide services through academic departments, special program offices such as the Higher Education Opportunity Program or the SEEK Program, or through campus Learning Centers. Academic honor societies and student government organizations are other sources of academic support.

The most common form of academic support is tutoring. Tutoring may be provided on a one-to-one basis with a student receiving support from a faculty member, a teaching assistant, or a peer tutor. Learning Centers may also offer tutorial services in small group sessions. Some institutions schedule students for tutoring at the beginning of a course to assist those students who have been identified as needing extra assistance. In other instances, students voluntarily, or upon the recommendation of a faculty member, may request tutoring as they experience difficulty with a course.

As David W. Breneman and William N. Haarlow state in an April 1999 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education "remediation in higher education is not a new phenomenon, although it is new to the public spotlight." Colleges and universities have a history of providing academic support to students who need assistance to perform well in a challenging academic environment. And according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there has been no significant increase in the amount of remediation offered on college campuses in recent years.

In October 1996, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published the most recent comprehensive report on the extent to which colleges and universities engage in remedial education, Remedial Education at Higher Education Institutions in Fall 1995. (Table 1).

NCES sent survey questionnaires to 849 two- and four-year higher education institutions and had a 94 percent response rate. Highlights from the survey report that:

• About three-quarters (78 percent) of higher education institutions that enroll freshmen offered at least one reading, writing or mathematics course in fall 1995. Remedial courses were especially common at public 2-year institutions (100 percent) and institutions with high minority enrollments (94 percent). Public four-year institutions were also important providers of remediation, with 81 percent providing at least one remedial reading, writing or mathematics course.

• Remedial writing courses were offered by 71 percent and remedial mathematics courses by 72 percent of higher education institutions.

• Remedial reading courses were offered by 57 percent and remedial writing and mathematics courses by about three-quarters of higher education institutions that enrolled freshmen. Almost all (99 percent) public two-year institutions offered remedial courses in each subject area.

• Remedial courses in mathematics were taken by more freshmen than were remedial reading and writing courses.

• In general, about three-quarters of students enrolled in remedial courses pass or successfully complete those courses.

• At most institutions, students do not take remedial courses for long periods of time: two-thirds of institutions indicated that the average time a student takes remedial courses was less than 1 year; 28 percent indicated that the average time was more than 1 year. Students were more likely to take remedial courses for a longer time at certain types of institutions than at others, with fewer public 2-year and high minority enrollment institutions reporting that students take remedial courses for less than 1 year.

• Institutional credit (e.g., credit that counts toward financial aid, campus housing, or full-time student status, but does not count toward degree completion) was the most frequent type of credit given for remedial reading, writing or mathematics courses, with about 70 percent of institutions giving this type of credit in each subject area.

• The most frequently used approach for selecting students who need remedial coursework was to give all entering freshmen placement tests to determine the need for remedial coursework: about 60 percent of institutions used this approach in each subject area.

• A third of institutions offering remedial courses reported that there were state policies or laws that affected the remedial offerings of their institution, with many more public than private institutions reporting that they were affected (57 percent and 40 percent of public 2 -year and 4-year institutions compared with less than 10 percent of the private institutions . . .). The major ways in which state policies or laws affected the remedial offerings was to require or encourage institutions to offer remedial education.

• About a quarter of the institutions reported that there was a limit on the length of time a student may take remedial courses at their institution. Time limits on remediation were set by institutional policy at 75 percent of the institutions with time limits, and by state policy or law at 21 percent of the institutions.

 The national picture helps set the context for a look at remediation in New York State.

B. New York State

Table 2 shows enrollment in remedial education in New York State. Slightly over 11 percent of undergraduates were enrolled in at least one remedial course in 1996-97. This represents a slight decrease from the 12.7 percent enrolled in remediation in 1989-90.

At the request of members of the Board of Regents, the Office of Higher Education conducted a survey of remediation policies at 44 selected colleges and universities in the independent and State University of New York sectors and had a response rate of 77 percent. The survey asked the following questions regarding remedial practices:

1. Does your institution provide remediation for first-time students? Please provide separate information for regularly admitted students, opportunity program students and students admitted in other special categories.
2. How does your institution determine the remedial needs of students?
3. When does your institution determine the remedial needs of students?
4. In what subject areas is remedial coursework provided?
5. Describe any exit requirements that must be met prior to a student attempting regular coursework.
6. How is remedial coursework funded at the institution?
7. Please describe any other academic support services at your institution, including tutoring, developmental or supportive courses.

Table 2.: Enrollment in Remedial Courses in New York State

To provide a framework for responses from the institutions, the following definitions of remedial and developmental coursework were used.

Remedial Course: A course that concentrates on the acquisition of knowledge at pre-college levels. Such courses do not carry college credit.

Developmental or supportive courses: Courses that combine pre-college and college-level material, with credit normally awarded for that part of the course which is college-level work. There will be more classroom/contact hours for the student in such a course than in a regular catalogue offering for the same credits.

Responses to the survey showed considerable differences in what constitutes remedial coursework. Several institutions with funded Higher Education Opportunity Programs (HEOP) indicated that no remediation was provided at the campus, although reports collected from the HEOP programs provided us with specific information regarding the nature and extent of remediation provided for HEOP students. We received similar responses from some of the SUNY institutions with Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP). In addition, there were institutions that indicated that remedial coursework is not provided on their campus but who also responded that there were non-credit courses in either reading, writing or mathematics offered at the institution. Further study would be necessary to determine whether these discrepancies arise from understating the amount of remediation that actually takes place because of concerns about institutional image, as is suggested in the Institute for Higher Education Policy report, or whether institutions have widely divergent views on what constitutes college-level work. It is probable that the responses to the OHE survey reflect both.

REMEDIATION POLICIES AND PRACTICES

AT SELECTED NEW YORK STATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

SUMMARY OF SURVEY RESULTS

Table 3.Responses to Remediation Survey Sent to Selected Colleges and Universities

Number and Percent by Type of Institution

(Totals may not equal 100 percent due to rounding.)

Table 4.Institutions Offering Remediation

Number and Percent by Type of Institution

Of the ten institutions responding that they offered no remediation at their campus, nine receive funding for opportunity programs for academically underprepared students. Six independent institutions receive State Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) grants (one also receives federal National Opportunity Program funding), and the three SUNY four-year institutions have Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP) funding. When campus opportunity programs are taken into account, 98 percent of the institutions responding to the survey do provide remediation, at least for some groups of students.

Table 5.How the Need for Remediation is Determined

NOTE: Most institutions use a combination of measures to determine remedial need.

Although four institutions indicated that the question "How does your institution determine the remedial needs of students?" was "not applicable," their other answers on the survey and the fact that they have opportunity programs on campus indicate that they do assess remediation needs at least for certain students (e.g., athletes or opportunity program students).

Table 6.When the Need for Remediation Is Determined

Table 7. Remedial Courses Offered

Table 7 includes only courses identified as remedial by the survey respondents. However, for five independent institutions responding that they offered no remediation, the information contained in their HEOP Final Reports indicates that, in fact, they all offer non-credit remedial coursework during their HEOP pre-freshman summer programs. Two institutions continue remedial courses for HEOP students during the academic year. One institution's HEOP program grants credit for its pre-freshman program. Of the three SUNY four-year campuses answering no to the remediation question, one indicates that the institution provides "non-credit supplemental courses," another provides "individual academic support and special seminars" for EOP students, and the last provides remediation for ESL students.

Table 8. Criteria for Exit from Remediation

NOTE: Some institutions use more that one criterion for exit from remediation.

Table 9. How Remediation Is Funded

NOTE: Some institutions use a combination of funding to pay the costs of remediation.

Table 10. Other Academic Support Available at the Institution

Every survey respondent indicated that it had tutoring available on campus, and most had a variety of services available to help students.

While the national focus on questions about remedial education provides us with rich data on many of the issues, the issue of the quality of remedial education has, for the most part, been unstudied. There are very limited findings in the area of the success of remedial education. Most information on the quality of remediation comes from responses to students' evaluation of remedial courses.

We know from New York State's experience with the Higher Education Opportunity Program that remedial education can be successful. One example of this success is the retention of students who complete the HEOP prefreshman summer programs. Of those who participated in the 1997 prefreshman summer programs, approximately 97 percent enrolled for the fall 1997 and just over 91 percent enrolled for the spring 1998 semester. Using degree completion as another measure of the success of remedial education, the most recent cohort data for HEOP show that the program has a 51 percent graduation rate.

As Tables 11 and 12 demonstrate, however, there are differences in graduation rates for students who participate in the opportunity programs, the majority of whom take some remedial coursework, and other students in each sector and at both the 2- and 4-year degree levels.

Table 11: Graduation Rates of Postsecondary Opportunity Program Students

And All Students Entering Associate Degree Programs -- Summary

New York State

Fall 1992 -- Fall Cohort

Table 12: Graduation Rates of Postsecondary Opportunity Program Students

And All Students Entering Baccalaureate Degree Programs -- Sector Summary

New York State

Fall 1990 -- Cohort

The degree completion data from New York are interesting in light of the work of Dr. Clifford Adelman, senior analyst at the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Adelman's 1998 study looked at the inverse relationship between the amount of remediation a student needed and his or her completion of a degree. Adelman reports that the type and amount of remediation makes a difference regarding degree completion. His 1998 study found that the more reading remediation students needed, the less likely they were to receive a degree. In addition, 66 percent of the students in remedial reading were in three or more other remedial courses and only 12 percent of that group earned bachelor's degrees. Eighty percent of the students who needed more than one course in remedial reading were in two or more other remedial courses, and less than 9 percent earned bachelor's degrees. Additional research would be needed to determine whether or not the inverse relation Adelman mentions is a factor of the remedial needs of the students at the point they begin college, or more a factor of the quality of the remediation they receive.

A paper authored by David W. Breneman and William N. Haarlow, Remedial Education: Costs and Consequences presents the same viewpoint regarding the cost of remedial education. In the paper, Breneman and Haarlow estimate that the cost of remediation in the country is about 1 percent of the annual budgets of public institutions of higher education. Their conclusion is that the cost of remedial education is relatively low.

Robert M. Costrell, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, presents an opposing viewpoint about the cost of remedial education. Costrell, in his comments on the Breneman and Haarlow paper, accepts the fiscal calculations but raises issues about the non-budgetary costs in terms of academic standards in higher education. Costrell states, " . . . then one of the costs of unrestricted remediation is the acquiescence in and inadvertent encouragement of low high school standards."

In 1997, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) responded to questions raised by the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce on the issue of the costs of remedial education. GAO conducted a survey that looked at the scope of enrollment in remedial courses and the amount of financial aid paid generated by students enrolled in remedial courses. The GAO study found that the students enrolled in remedial courses at the institutions that responded to the survey received a relatively small amount of financial aid. "Of all financial aid awarded to underclassmen at these schools, approximately 13 percent went to freshmen and sophomores who enrolled in at least one remedial course. In addition, only 6 percent of freshmen and sophomores at these schools both received financial aid and enrolled in remedial courses."

Another way of looking at the cost issue is to calculate the percentage of financial aid that paid for remedial courses. The GAO study found that "no more than 4 percent of aid dollars awarded to freshmen and sophomores could have paid for remedial courses."

Data on the cost of remediation in New York State are not readily available. It would be possible to make a reasonable estimate that given the similarity in data for the total numbers of students enrolled in remediation, the costs for remediation in New York State may also be comparable to those for the rest of the country.

In conclusion, remediation in higher education has remained basically unchanged over the past five years. The majority of colleges and universities in New York State and the nation offer students some form of remedial or developmental academic support with varying levels of success and the costs of remediation remain low.