Dive Brief:
- A study by the City University of New York System found that community college students with remedial needs performed better taking a college-level statistics course than non-credit remedial algebra courses.
- CUNY created the study to help learn how to best structure its remedial programs, which cost CUNY “many millions of dollars a year,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
- The CUNY findings seem to support the view of Complete College America, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded group advocating for fewer placements of students in non-credit remedial courses.
Dive Insight:
Other community colleges have switched to teaching statistics to students in non-STEM majors, instead of algebra, because statistics is a more practical subject and therefore may be easier to learn. The CUNY experiment tracked the progress of 717 students, splitting the group into three classes. Students who took the introductory statistics course with a weekly workshop had a 56% pass rate, while those in a non-credit remedial algebra course with a weekly workshop had a 45% pass rate. Students in the non-credit remedial algebra course with no workshop had a 39% pass rate.