Remedial education programs in higher education : a case study

Abstract

American higher education has moved from a philosophy of selective admission to its present wide-spread philosophy of open or relaxed admissions. This open-door philosophy has become a major problem for administrators in post-secondary education because of the number of students who enter college without the academic background necessary to succeed in a traditional college program. Remedial courses have been added to the college curriculum to aid these students. In 1982, a remedial program was added to the curriculum at Louisiana Tech University. In order to test the effectiveness of this program, a sample of the 1982 freshmen who completed remedial courses in English and/or mathematics were compared to a sample from the 1981 freshmen who had similar educational backgrounds and test scores but were not remediated. A statistical analysis of the means of the independent variables showed the two groups to be very similar. By comparing these two groups, the study (1) field tested a multivariable evaluation approach, (2) attempted to determine the actual success rate of the remediated students, and (3) identified variables which would serve as good indicators of college success. The results indicated that a multivariable approach using long-range and short-range indicators was useful in determining the actual success rate of remedial students. Results also showed that remediation did not improve a student's chance of making a better grade on the first degree-level course in English or mathematics over those students in the control group. However, the remedial students did remain in the university longer, on the average, than the non-remediated students. It was also determined that the grades made in high school English courses proved to be the best indicator of success in college. Other interesting relationships and findings concerning the independent and dependent variables were reviewed.