Starting anything can be a time of unease and apprehension for anyone. While many students may feel excitement and anticipation about enrolling in college and starting a new chapter, these positive feelings can often be accompanied by self-doubt and obstacles, which often include remedial courses.
While some say these courses are meant to help and give students more support or a better understanding of the material, other evidence suggests that remedial courses offered at colleges are doing more harm than good for students.
While some students enjoy the social aspect and the enrichment of attending college, many students want to zoom through it and get a degree or certificate. Jobs require a lot of time, remedial college courses can slow people down.
“Students who placed into the lowest level math course (Remedial Math) did slightly worse than their peers who were assigned to the next highest course, as they earned 3.0 fewer college level credits than their peers by the end of their third year,” reported The National Center for Post Secondary Research.
These classes should not be offered if they harm a student’s education. This raised another concern regarding colleges offering remedial courses lowering a student’s success rate.
According to What to Become, “75% of students required to take remedial classes fail to graduate.”
So now this is not just about “slowing down” a student’s journey toward a degree or a new career, it is putting more pressure on students to the point where many of them give up. Many of these students do not actually need the remedial courses they are forced to take. Students forced to take them grow frustrated and tired, and eventually drop out.
“…fewer than one in 10 graduate within three years,” stated Anne Kim in her article “Getting College Remediation Reform to the Finish Line”.
Many campuses offer free tutoring. These courses are already adding to the ever-growing cost of tuition and textbooks.
These evidently unnecessary courses become the straw that breaks the camel’s back, causing a high number of students to drop out. These are only a handful of the reasons that remedial classes should not be forced onto college students.