Sigh - I appreciate your true effort here at a solution. But you make the mistaken assumption that going to CC is ‘free’ –exactly where do these students live? What do they eat while they are at CC? Their admission to UT Austin (if they are a low resource student) likely includes a meal plan and dorm. We have a major CC in my area -there is no food plan or dorms. And not everyone’s parents are willing or able to house and feed an 18 year old kid.
I really do love a lot about CC -but it reeks of privilege. I have a number of students who work 20-30 hours a week because their parents won’t provide any support and who also won’t fill out a FAFSA or CSS. And they aren’t kids who have been ‘kicked out’ –they just come from families who don’t provide support for ‘adults’. These kids have nearly free or free tuition based on their grades. But they have to work so they have a place to live and food to eat.
Your plan basically says, “Congrats - you got in - but hey you can’t actually COME here until you magically find a way to take classes and feed yourself for a year!”
I would like to know what proportion of the students who need remedial courses at UCSD are LCFF+ students. Not accepting LCFF+ students would not be a change UCSD could make on its own. It would be an injustice if admission to the top UCs were not possible for poor students attending under resourced HSs. I’m not ready to say that’s underlying this new report though, although that’s certainly a possibility.
UT Austin and the state ed board see it differently. UT Austin has made a not insignificant investment in remedial classes (not sure about the other 4 year TX publics.)
CUNYs offer remediation courses, called co-requisite courses (at both the 4 year and 2 year schools.) Co-requisite courses carry college credit. Remediation courses (the system that was in place prior to a few years ago) used to not carry college credit. https://resources.fairfuturesny.org/AppendixG15
SUNYs also have the corequisite model.
I don’t know the profile of the instructors of these classes.
One needs to be careful when reading threads of woe. We often see titles that are almost click-bait in nature. When we read further into the threads, and ask questions, we often find that the student was applying to very selective majors.
The UC application is a different beast. It requires quite a bit of effort in communicating an applicant’s attributes above and beyond their GPA. One can’t compare two students based on stats alone. One can’t compare college campuses based on stats alone. There is much more to the application.
Regarding “less qualified applicants,” please be careful. I agree with @ali-ice. We aren’t in the position to judge an applicant’s qualification or potential. The report doesn’t tell us the majors of students taking the lower level math courses. I attended UCSB in the 80s. My application included a transcript, SAT score, and Achievement Tests. They knew my academic strengths and weaknesses. I was accepted and required to take “dumbbell English.” I graduated, attended Berkeley for grad school, and have had a successful career as a doctor for the past 30+ years. English never was, and will never be, my strong suit. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t qualified to attend a UC.
I agree with the problem you’ve identified. But having four year, flagship universities try to solve the food insecurity, unsustainable minimum wage floor, housing costs, shaky social safety net and the way this country finances K-12 education while they are ALSO supposed to be the premier public research institution in their state seems like mission creep in the extreme. And let’s be honest- it is not uncommon for the students you are writing about to have run out of their Pell grant before they’ve actually completed their degree. So you are advocating kicking the can down the road- they’ll still be unable to afford to complete their degree, except it’s four years later and they’ve taken remedial HS math at a flagship university? Who does this help?
I remember a lecture I heard from a Superintendent of Schools of a major metropolitan school system several years ago. The metrics in his system had gone up- quite significantly- and he was “on the road” to talk about lessons learned.
The biggest was his view that his teachers could not solve homelessness. They could not solve hunger (except with the school’s already existing free lunch program). They could not solve the fracturing of some of the families in his area- mom in prison, dad in rehab with only infrequent contact with the kids, siblings separated in foster care. Etc. He said “My teachers can only solve two problems. Kids who can’t read, and kids who can’t do math. My teachers excel at these two things, even though they are terrible at solving all these other issues that our kids walk into the building with. So I tell our governor, the public which votes on bond issues, federal policy makers, academics at think tanks at universities- “All this other stuff is on you. Right now, my school leaders, teachers, and para’s are going to focus on the only two things we excel at- teaching reading and teaching math”.
I think this is profound. And if that’s the truth for an urban middle school- how much more so for a renowned research university. Stick to the mission. Flagship universities are not built to solve for 19 year olds who don’t have family support, or 18 year olds who don’t earn enough at their Pizza Hut job to pay rent on an apartment, or 22 year olds who need to drop out when they are two semesters away from a BA because they exhausted their Pell taking trig at a four year university.
I wanted to respond to this too. You do have to look at relative number of spots available at the 4 year publics vs. the number of HS grads in each state. Additionally, you mentioned top academic students being ‘shut out of all the top UC schools’, but then when talking about Michigan bring UMich-Flint and EMU into the mix, which most would not call a ‘top school’. When looking at Merced (latest USNWR rank #25 public unis, #57 National Unis) as well as the CSUs, I don’t see a shortage of excellent four year education options in California (just like in Michigan with the examples you shared.) Sadly, ‘top’ students and their parents don’t see it that way. I just can’t get worked up that a ‘top’ student is somehow harmed because they might have to attend Merced.
This is a radically different argument. Here, you seem to be saying that the UC schools should not sort offers of admission by academic quality, but by academic “readiness.” That any student that has a baseline of middling scores should be able to attend UCB, UCLA, or UCSD. Heck, they could even run a lottery for admission among the population of in-state students who are academically middling or above. Your “bold” suggestion would absolutely increase equity across a number of dimensions. It would also lower the level of academic achievement and performance at the schools. If California wanted to transform its 3 flagship research institutions (the envy of the world) into schools whose mission it is to educate a broad swath of middling (but college ready!) students, that could certainly be justified along equity lines and may actually be preferable. But it certainly isn’t the UC system that exists now. The current system explicitly sorts for academic high achievers and admits them to the 3 flagship schools. The problem is that it is also undermining that sorting system by excluding test scores. That introduces a lot of confusion into the process about what exactly UC schools are selecting for and how admissions decisions are being made.
And btw, if UCSD were to bring back test scores, that doesn’t mean its’ admissions decisions would be based solely on test scores. It could still use a holistic evaluation process in which a lower resourced kid with a 1240 but phenomenal potential would be admitted. But, importantly, it would also mean that the private school rich kid with a 1240 would be rejected in favor of a middle class public school kid with a 1560. Because UCSD would actually have the test scores in front of them to know who they’re admitting.
The elite colleges should not be offering remedial education while turning away thousands of qualified candidates. The UC system already takes lots of community college transfers and should likely make this the default path for kids who need some remedial classes. A return to testing would help significantly.
NY took City College- the gem of the public university system in the entire state at one point, producing Pulitzer prize winners, Nobel winners, etc. and essentially gutted its academic requirements in the admirable but futile attempt to create a level playing field among its applicants and students.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a state as large and robust as California having a tier of public U’s for its strongest students, and lots of other options for kids who aren’t as well prepared.
We can all argue about whether an SAT score is the best way to differentiate between “elite college ready” and just “college ready”, but watching what has happened to public U’s who have eroded their more rigorous academic options suggests that “opening up” Berkeley, UCSD etc. is not the way to go.
I appreciate the well thought out reply (a thing I REALLY love about CC - is the amount of thought people put into their responses) – and perhaps the state flagship isn’t the place for that. But a lot of those kids have potential given the right opportunity.
ETA: I work at a state flagship -but not a ‘prestigious’ one -so we do see these kids a lot - way more than I would like to - and our school tries to provide support as much as we can (some official -but often through less official means -like food pantries). So my perspective comes from that viewpoint.
And this - right here is an argument in favor of the tightening up those requirements. It’s a very valid point. I can potentially be swayed - but for every rule there always seems to be someone who breaks the expectations.
100%. And as a result, what I hear the UCSD Senate (aka faculty) saying is that those other ‘attributes’ can hide a math weakness, and therefore students struggle if they are pre-STEM. Even some social science majors require Calc. (If they are a Lit/Hume wannabe, nbd.)
Not quite; it’s the responsibility of UC to educate and graduate the top ~eighth of HS grads. (Cal States’ top 3rd.). UC is a research-focused university. Cal State is not.
IMO, they disagree with you that their job is remedial education at a highly selective R1. The faculty are just suggesting that a standardized math score be used in computation of that top 8th.
Yes, it is a national problem, but CA is unique in that it offers 3 levels of higher ed, with the community colleges and Cal States much better prepared and equipped to offer remedial education. (Anecdotally, I know some UC students will take transferable classes at the neighboring community college, including remediation but also a GE class to get ahead.)
Me neither. But turn that around, as in I can’t get too worked up with UCSD not accepting some kids who have a lower math test score and that those kids have to attend UC-Merced (or San Diego State) or a Community college adn transfer to UCSD, per the California Master Plan for Higher Ed.
I agree. I personally also can’t get worked up that a particular top student is “only” admitted to Merced. But apart from individual outcomes and feelings, the UC system seems to sort its admissions offers by students’ high school records. So if UCSD accepts a private school rich kid with (an unseen) 1240 and rejects a middle class public school kid with (an unseen) 1540 (but a similar profile along other dimensions), it’s not that I’m worked up that the 1540 kid ends up at Merced, it’s that it’s evidence that UC’s sorting system is working sub-optimally. And again, as I said up thread, choosing to view test scores doesn’t preclude UCSD from still making holistic admissions decisions that take into consideration students’ backgrounds and possible lack of resources. UCSD could still choose to admit underprivileged students with “lesser” test scores because those students show exceptional potential. But at least UCSD would have much more information with which to make its holistic decisions.
I’m really learning a lot from this discussion - the California system is just SO different from my own experience. But they DO have plenty of opportunities for students to excel -so maybe I do need to re-evaluate my (limited) perspective.
IMO that’s not for us to decide here. The state Ed boards and universities decide how to spend their resources.
Does anyone have an example of a state flagship that doesn’t offer remedial/corequisite courses?
That’s but one of their suggestions. Their stated goal is to have zero students needing to take remedial math, and that means they don’t want to accept those students. I expect the only way those numbers could possibly work is to not accept LCFF+ students, which I doubt the state would agree to.
Agree these kids have potential. Lots and lots of potential. And I have no issue with a public U having a “SWAT team” on staff- a social worker who can get a kid health insurance from a plan cheaper than what the university offers if he/she qualifies, a benefits coordinator to make sure that the kid is benefiting from ALL appropriate programs- federal, state, local; a housing expert who works with local landlords to make sure they understand the benefit of accepting vouchers, etc.
But a team like this is going to benefit the entire university- there are plenty of kids from middle class families who are eligible for programs they don’t know about, and university staff who ALSO don’t know what they are eligible for. (Down payment subsidies- often provided in college towns, and usually NOT restricted to faculty even though that’s what the custodial staff who can’t afford to buy their first home think).
Remedial classes don’t benefit the entire university. And a kid who wants to become a pharmacist, physical therapist, physician, etc. doesn’t help him or herself when freshman year at the four year U is spent on a do-over of HS. Those more advanced classes STILL need to be taken- which is when the “super senior” or “I’ve been here 5 years but still can’t graduate” problem gets addressed.
