The “Guided Pathways” Model
In my
last post, I gave a quick overview of the community college, highlighting
some of its achievements and current problems. The problem now getting the most
national attention is the low rate of persistence and completion: approximately
30% of students finish a degree or occupational credential in four years. There
have been a number of attempts over the last few decades to address this poor
record of success, from a rethinking and restructuring of remedial English and
mathematics to more intensive, technology-enhanced ways to provide orientation
and advising.
A comprehensive reform plan that is
much discussed right now is the “guided pathways” model put forth in Bailey,
Jaggars, and Jenkins’ Redesigning America’s Community Colleges. This book condenses and focuses years
of research—a fair amount of which comes out of Columbia’s Community College
Research Center, which Bailey directs. I am going to consider these authors’
model in this and the remaining posts I write in my upcoming blogs on the
community college.
Bailey, et al. locate the
fundamental problem with the community college in the structure of its
curriculum and the institutional assumptions that undergird that structure. In
its attempt to serve all members of its area, the typical community college has
allowed to proliferate a wide range of academic, occupational, general
interest, and service courses and programs. Though some type of orientation and
counseling and advising are typically available, their quality and
effectiveness vary, and counselors’ case load—1,000 students per counselor is
not uncommon—works against any substantial contact. And many students don’t
utilize these services at all.
As the authors see it, community
colleges “offer an array of often-disconnected courses, programs, and support services
that students are expected to navigate on their own. Students are confused by a
plethora of poorly explained program, transfer, and career options; moreover,
on closer scrutiny many programs do not clearly lead to the further education
and employment outcomes they are advertised to help students achieve. We refer
to this as a cafeteria-style,
self-service model.” Students, many of whom are the first in their families
to go to college, might enter college without a clear goal and/or get
inadequate or incomplete advising, take courses that don't lead to a specified
outcome, take courses out of sequence, or take courses they don’t need at all.
As remedy, the authors suggest a
more structured approach. Community colleges “need to engage faculty and student
services professionals in creating more clearly structured, educationally
coherent program pathways that lead to students’ end goals, and in rethinking
instruction and student support services in ways that facilitate students’
learning and success as they progress along these paths. In short, to maximize
both access and success, a
fundamental redesign is necessary. We refer to the resulting strategy as the guided pathways model.”
The authors acknowledge the laudable
reforms attempted recently, such as improving the curriculum for remedial
courses and streamlining them or creating programs at the front end of college
to better orient and guide new students. But these reforms have had limited
impact on completion, the authors claim, because the large macro-structure of
the “cafeteria model” remained in place. Broad structural change is needed.
To realize the Guided Pathways Model
faculty and staff would create sequences of courses that lead to clearly
defined outcomes: for example, an occupational credential or sub-specialty
certification; an Associate of Arts degree in one of the social sciences;
transfer status in physical science to a state university. Because many
students enter without a clear goal—this is a major issue in the community
college—there will be “meta-majors” that reflect broad areas of interest (e.g.,
business; health care; English, arts, and humanities), “each of which features
a default curriculum that gives students a taste of the given field and helps
them either narrow down their choice to a specific program or switch to another
area of interest.”
This major restructuring of the
curriculum provides direction for other significant institutional reforms that
will aid in retention and completion.
Instruction. The faculty
working within a particular pathway will together define “the skills, concepts,
and habits of mind” they want students to develop through the pathway “and map
out how students will build those learning outcomes across courses.”
Librarians, instructional technology specialists, and student services staff
will assist faculty in incorporating “innovative approaches to teaching and
learning.”
Orientation and advising. At
the front end, increased effort will go to helping students clarify goals and
choose a major or “meta-major”. Orientation to college will be beefed up, and
students will be enrolled in courses that provide ongoing information and
guidance about college life. Through the increased integration of technology
into advising, students will receive timely feedback on their progress, and
instructors and counselors will be alerted when something goes awry—for
example, a student drops a course.
Remedial or developmental
education. Because so many community college students are held for one or
more remedial courses, and because the traditional remedial sequences in math,
writing, and reading can include as many as four courses for each subject,
students required to take multiple courses are stalled in their progress and
have a higher probability of dropping out. Here the authors of Redesigning
America’s Community Colleges adopt the various reforms of remediation
currently in place: fewer, more intensive courses; additional instruction and
tutoring added to courses; math, writing, or reading taught in the context of a
student’s curricular pathway, e.g., a writing course built on topics and
readings from healthcare or a math course linked to a psychology or sociology
course. The authors’ assumption is that these currently existing improved
remedial courses will function more effectively as part of a pathways model,
becoming an “on ramp” to a student’s college-level course of study.
The above in a nutshell is the
redesign of the community college advocated by Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins. As
the authors admit, aspects of it are already in play, but not brought together
in such a comprehensive fashion. A few two- and four-year colleges are
implementing some version of the pathways model to good effect, and the authors
profile them.
I think the pathways idea is a good
one. I have known so many students who would have benefitted tremendously from
it—would have taken fewer courses that were extraneous to their goals, used up
less financial aid money, moved more quickly toward completion of a certificate
or degree or toward transfer to a four-year school. And I think the suggested
reforms that follow, especially related to orientation and advising are long
overdue. I raise similar suggestions in Back to School. And as for the
rethinking of remediation, I’ve been on that boat for thirty-plus years. So I
want to be clear in my agreement with and support of the reforms laid out in Redesigning
America’s Community Colleges.
But I do have some observations and
in some cases reservations to offer, and I will begin to lay them out in my
next blog.
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