When discussing outcomes and curricula at community colleges, it is important to ask first what their purpose is. Are they mainly transitional places for students to get into a four-year school? Are they transitional places to prepare students for specific workplaces, i.e. vocational schools?
Students’ choice to attend a community college is often locational or financial, or skills-based (meaning they lacked scores to be accepted into a four-year college), and may even be a combination of the three, as they can all affect each other. Community college students are a variety of ages. They may be recent high school graduates or drop-outs, or they may be parents or military veterans returning to school after a lengthy interim. They are not often there to have the traditional college experience, the kind on TV, espoused by our culture, which values finding oneself over education. Students who choose to go to community college typically have a reason for going to school as opposed to working. Every community college must consider the variance on needs and desires among the student body.
According to the Community College Research Center (CCRC), only a third of community college students complete the program within six years. Again, there are certainly a multitude of reasons why this is the case, being that the student body is diverse, but the number is still disgracefully low and calls into question what the goals these community colleges attain to. The 2015 TYCA “White Paper on Educational Reform” references Sullivan’s call for two-year colleges to re-examine how they define success–for students and the institution. For the insititution that may be broader recognition, which requires favorable statistics. But students do not see themselves as statistics. Their success is defined by their own personal goals, which may change, but always remain personal, for their own benefit.
“Acceleration” is a word used throughout the 2015 TYCA White Paper, and it is supposed to benefit students by allowing them to save time and money. But is acceleration always about students? Or is it about institutions trying to adjust statistics to show quantitative success?
Within the Florida case study TYCA discusses, they went over six different models two-year colleges use for getting below-level students on track: 1) Mainstreaming, which allows for below-level students to attend regular composition classes with on-level students, while also attending a special lab with the same composition instructor; 2) Studio courses, which allow for students to sign up, based on in-class diagnostics, for studio writing support courses; 3) Compression, in which students take traditionally lengthier courses crammed into a shorter period of time in order to move through school at a rate similar to their on-level peers; 4) Integration or Contextualization, which gives students composition courses in conjunction with other vocational courses, so as to provide a context for their writing skills; 5) Stretch courses, which break up a first-semester composition course into two semesters (ideally with the same professor) so as to better identify and support student needs; 6) Module courses, which allows students to break up courses based on particular needs or weaknesses, so as not to leave them to a one-size-fits-all basic writing course.
All have shown some measure of success in terms of student retention and growth, but there is no research that shows which one is superior across the board. As long as there are failing students, two-year colleges are obligated to continue experimenting with curricula and pedagogy.
The National Council of Teachers of English. “TYCA White Paper on Educational Reforms.” 2015.
On Teaching, Writing, and Teaching Writing 