This
commentary appeared in Inside Higher Ed on June 23, 2016. It offers some
thoughts on a currently popular and valuable reform strategy that is being
considered and in many cases implemented by a number of community colleges
across the country.
***
A much-discussed, comprehensive
reform plan for improving community colleges and their low rates of student
persistence and completion is the “Guided Pathways” model put forth by Thomas Bailey,
Shanna Smith Jaggars and Davis Jenkins’ in their book: Redesigning America’s Community Colleges. Published last
year, the book condenses and focuses years of research -- a fair amount of
which comes out of the Community College Research Center at Columbia
University’s Teachers College, which Bailey directs.
I support of the reforms laid out
in book. But I also have some concerns -- maybe cautions in a better word -- about
the social and political dynamics of establishing the Guided Pathways model,
and about the complex nature of the typical community college student
population.
In the book, Bailey and his
coauthors 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,
quality and effectiveness vary, and counselors’ caseloads -- 1,000 students per
counselor is not uncommon -- work against any substantial contact. Many
students don’t utilize these services at all.
The authors label this arrangement the
Cafeteria- Style, Self-Service Model. Students, many of whom are the first in
their families to go to college, might enroll without a clear goal, get
inadequate or incomplete advising or take courses that don't lead to a
specified outcome are out of sequence or that they’ve already taken.
As a remedy, the authors suggest a
basic redesign,, arguing that 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.”
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.
To realize the Guided Pathways
Model, faculty and staff would create sequences of courses that lead to clearly
defined outcomes. And this major
restructuring of the curriculum would provide direction for other significant
institutional reforms that will aid in retention and completion. Faculty
members who work 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.”
At the front end, increased effort will go to helping students clarify goals
and choose a major or “meta-major,” which would reflect broad areas of
interest. 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 --when a student drops a course, for example.
In addition, the authors adopt
various promising reforms to remedial education, such as sequences featuring
fewer, more intensive courses, and the use of additional instruction and
tutoring. Their assumption is that improved remedial courses will function more
effectively as part of a Pathways model, resulting in greater numbers of
students moving into a college-level course of study.
Enacting the Model
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 the suggested reforms that follow, especially related to
orientation and advising, are long overdue. I raise similar suggestions in my
2012 book, Back to School. As for
rethinking remediation, I’ve been on that boat for more than thirty-five years.
To achieve this restructuring will require collaborative engagement on the
part of faculty and staff, both within departments and across them. The authors
realize the challenges of effecting such engagement and devote a chapter to the
topic. They wisely begin the chapter by noting some of the difficulties,
including the possible lack of trust among administration and faculty and
staff; the divide between faculty and student services; the disruptive role
played by dissenters.
The book then suggests strategies
to work through these problems. For example, its authors suggest including
dissenters in program planning, creating planning teams that combine faculty
with student services personnel, the use of data to question current practices,
and so on. Though this is a legitimate way to structure such a chapter, the structure
implies that the barriers to change listed at the beginning of the chapter can
be overcome with the management and group facilitation techniques presented in
the remainder of the chapter -- an impression reinforced by the lack of any
examples or discussion of what to do when the techniques fail.
The authors have a wealth of
experience studying two- and four-year colleges, so they surely know how messy
and unpredictable the process of reform can be. Perhaps they (or their editor)
decided that it was best to present their model and a process to achieve it,
and not to overly complicate things with extended discussion of potential
pitfalls and blunders. Fair enough. And perhaps the authors’ disciplinary
backgrounds in economics, public policy and quantitative methodologies limit
their treatment of politics, ideology and the tangled day-to-day dynamics of
status, power and turf -- which, depending on the institution, can include
everything from budgets to racial tensions to contentious personal histories.
To limit treatment of all this is a
legitimate choice, but should be stated and underscored, for my worry is that
individual colleges attempting the reforms suggested by Bailey, Jaggars, and
Jenkins will encounter more of a mess than anticipated and possibly scrap or
significantly weaken the implementation of ideas that have real merit.
The organizational
compartmentalizing and the administrative hierarchies that exist in the
community college are not only structural features; they are electric with
power and status. The various methods suggested by the authors to bring people
together to work through these dynamics toward the common goal of creating
Guided Pathways are good ones, tried and true in the toolkit of management consultants.
But they also can be foiled by genuine ideological differences about the
purpose of a particular area of study or of education in general. They can also
be foiled by turf protection, administrative power struggles and pure and
simple personal animosity.
To be sure, change happens. I’ve witnessed several successful programs take shape over the past few years as a core of energetic and creative faculty are given the resources to run with their ideas. But during that same time I’ve also seen such groups -- inspired, seemingly tireless people -- be stonewalled or shut down by larger groups of faculty within their subject area, by their department heads or by middle managers.
To be sure, change happens. I’ve witnessed several successful programs take shape over the past few years as a core of energetic and creative faculty are given the resources to run with their ideas. But during that same time I’ve also seen such groups -- inspired, seemingly tireless people -- be stonewalled or shut down by larger groups of faculty within their subject area, by their department heads or by middle managers.
Bailey and his coathors suggest
arriving at shared values as a starting place for examining current practices
and changing them. For example, the authors write, “In our experience, faculty
and staff choose to work at community colleges because they believe in the
open-access mission and are passionate about improving students’ lives.” This
is generally true in my experience as well, but with two qualifications -- which
illustrate how arriving at shared values can be more complicated than it seems.
First, regarding the embrace of the
open-access mission of the community college, a percentage of faculty at most
institutions believe some of the students they teach should not be in college,
and certainly not in their classrooms. These faculty align themselves with the
universities that educated them, want to teach students who have some affinity
with their discipline, and are not at all trained to work with students who are
academically underprepared. In some cases, they are younger and work at the
community college because that was the only position available in a tight job
market. In other cases, these are older faculty who have been at the college
for decades and lived through a significant shift in student demographics. They
look back at a golden age -- one that most likely did not exist as they
remember it.
Furthermore, faculty can have quite
different beliefs about concepts like “improving students’ lives.” And some of
these differing beliefs can present resilient barriers to change. One faculty
member believes that to change methods of instruction will compromise standards
and lead to sub-par education. Another believes that students -- particularly
those with poor academic backgrounds --need to have positive experiences in
school, so avoids challenging them intellectually. And yet another operates
with racial, class or gender biases that limit what he or she thinks is
realistic for some students in school or career.
Another assumption in the book is
that when faced with data about student, instructor or program performance,
faculty and staff with guidance will engage in reflection and behavioral change.
Some people will respond thus -- and thank goodness for them. But other
responses are also possible. People don’t believe the data -- especially in
institutions where there is a high level of distrust between faculty and administrators.
People question the way the data were obtained. People blame the students. This
last response is a big one where test data or pass/fail rates are concerned.
When faced with data demonstrating the low pass rates in remedial English or
math, some faculty respond by stating that those students don’t belong here. As
one community college staff member said to me, “It’s hard to admit we’ve been
doing something wrong.”
For all its merits, the book’s implementation plan is sometimes thin on the political and social dynamics of institutional change. To work amid a complex human landscape, the plan might well need to be combined with savvy, perhaps even Machiavellian leadership; with horse-trading; with both symbolic and financial incentives; with the strategic use of personal relationships; and, unfortunately, at times, with reassignment or marginalization of obstructionist personnel.
For all its merits, the book’s implementation plan is sometimes thin on the political and social dynamics of institutional change. To work amid a complex human landscape, the plan might well need to be combined with savvy, perhaps even Machiavellian leadership; with horse-trading; with both symbolic and financial incentives; with the strategic use of personal relationships; and, unfortunately, at times, with reassignment or marginalization of obstructionist personnel.
Pathways and Students' Lives
The structural fix Bailey and his
coauthors offer makes sense given the evidence that the status quo creates a host
of barriers to student success. Still, like all structural remedies, this one
runs the risk of reducing nuanced and layered human dilemmas to a technical
problem, and thus being unresponsive to or missing entirely the particular life
circumstances of students. So, yes, make the college curriculum more coherent,
but realize that other human and material resources also will be needed to meet
the needs of many students, and, as well, build into your structural changes
the flexibility needed to honor the range of life circumstances your students
bring to college. Otherwise, the fix may create unintended negative
consequences.
A significant number of people who
go to community college are adults with family and other responsibilities. They
can only go part-time. They can’t go every semester. They sometimes quit in
mid-semester because of family emergencies or changes in employment. They go to
two or three different institutions. A Guided Pathways model could help them in
some ways -- at the least lend coherence to their course selection -- but not
necessarily speed up their progress through college. For them, evening or
weekend classes, good online courses, legitimate competency-based options and
counseling and advising in off-hours, weekends or online would also be
necessary.
A different kind of problem lies at
the other end of the college age continuum. We don't have in our country many
avenues to help young people develop after high school. We don’t, for example,
have a robust system of occupational apprenticeships or of national service.
Young people who are not on the academic fast track and do not have a clear
college goal have few options: entry-level, low-skilled, low-paying work or the
military. Or they can enroll in the local community college hoping that some
career path will reveal itself. Many such students don’t stay long, but those
who do typically change their areas of study several times, shift between
full-time and part-time attendance, start classes they don’t complete, stop-out
and return to school. Eventually some find their way. A Guided Pathways model
could help these students by more clearly delineating curricular and career
options at a critical stage of early adult development.
But there are some powerful
developmental dynamics going on here that lie beyond a structural fix in the
curriculum. In interviewing such students, I’m taken by the simple but powerful
fact that this process of discovery takes time. A lot of growing up happens:
cutting back on partying and frivolous entertainments, changing one’s
understanding of the purpose of school, bringing one’s fantasies in line with
one’s abilities, learning how to manage time and to study. In some cases,
students arrive at the big questions: Who am I? What kind of work do I want to
do? What is meaningful work for me? Why am I on this Earth? It certainly could
be argued that the community college is not the place to work all this out, but
if our society provides limited transitional institutions or spaces, young
people are left with few other options.
Then there is the issue of the
burdens students carry. I am continually struck by the hardship experienced by
so many community college students. To be sure, middle-class students from
stable and secure backgrounds attend community college, but, depending on the
location of the college, many students come from low-income to destitute
families; have to work 30 or more hours a week; live in cramped housing, some
of which is substandard; are food-insecure; and have health problems that are
inadequately treated. For some, there are worries about immigration. Some must
contend with prior involvement in the criminal justice system while others
struggle with addiction.
In the book After Admission, sociologist James Rosenbaum and his colleagues make
the critical point that a structural analysis of the problem with community
college student success takes us “beyond individual blame” and focuses our
attention on institutional factors that create barriers to academic progress.
Bailey and his coathorsoffer a corrective to these problematic structural
features. I do not intend to refocus blame on students, but I think it would be
a mistake to not attend to the details of their lives while conducting this
structural analysis. Otherwise the structural remedy might promise more than it
can deliver -- thus threatening its longevity -- and also inadvertently
contribute to the barriers students face by diverting attention from other
remedies they need.
I do not want the issues raised
here to be used as an excuse for maintaining the status quo. But even with the
most coherent and streamlined curricular pathways, there will still be a number
of students who enroll in one course at a time, who stop out, who take years to
find their academic or occupational path, whose past blunders and
transgressions continue to exact a material and psychological price, whose
personal history of neglect and even trauma can cripple their performance. All this and more require institutional
responses beyond Guided Pathways (though the model could enhance these
responses) as well as extra-institutional social services. The needs of the
community college population require a range of programs and accommodations to
make “the people’s college” more fully the uniquely American institution it, at
its best, can be.
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