From: Dana L. Thomas, VPAA

To: Faculty Alliance Members

From: Dana L. Thomas, VPAA

Date: March 27, 2014

Your chair, Robert Boeckmann, asked me to summarize why UA minimum baccalaureate standards are needed. While I whined at him a bit like some students do when given a new assignment, I do sincerely appreciate this opportunity and offer the following summary in response. I hope you find this useful in your deliberations.

In July 2013, the Statewide Academic Council (SAC) recommended that the three faculty senates set a minimum baccalaureate admission standard for the UA system and students that do not meet the admission standard, where historical data indicates substantial success in remediating them, should be admitted to a specific program to help them prepare for successful admission. The faculty senates would be jointly responsible for determining what the minimum admission criteria are.

The rationale for implementing minimum baccalaureate standards is provided in the paragraphs below;

Rationale provided by SAC at the time of approval:

UA institutions currently admit students that our historical data indicate do not complete baccalaureate degrees; this is an unethical practice. UA is and will remain an open admission institution. The UA mission includes the community college mission so students who apply for admission into a baccalaureate program but are not admitted should be accepted into an alternative program, such as a pre-baccalaureate certificate program (like the pre-nursing program), or either an AA or AS program. UA should only admit students into baccalaureate programs that are prepared to complete those programs.

This change is intended to have several impacts. First, this change is intended to clearly communicate to future students, their parents, their teachers and school districts, UA standards for baccalaureate admission standards. Second, the U.S. Department of Education often currently treats UA institutions as only four-year institutions and the required data reporting does not represent UA or Alaska well. The intended change is intended to more appropriately represent UA and Alaska on the national scene. Third, currently UA has relatively few clear pathways from associate programs to baccalaureate programs the way other community college – universities do in other states. This change is intended to encourage the development of such pathways and for UA to track students following those paths.

Additional rationale and comments from Dana Thomas, VPAA:

A 2013 UA report on developmental education requested by the Alaska legislature (see page 9 at http://www.alaska.edu/files/bor/130606Ref33_Rpt_Developmental_Education.pdf) indicated that no baccalaureate degree-seeking student entering UA between Fall 2002 and Fall 2006 and needing significant remediation in both math and English completed a baccalaureate program by 2012. This led me to the conclusion that UA was engaged in an unethical practice; admitting students into a program that we had clear evidence that we knew they would not complete.

The proposed minimum baccalaureate admission standards are one of several ways to improve college going and student success within UA. Many of these changes relate to efforts related to our incoming students’ need for developmental education. "Programs that show the greatest benefits with relatively rigorous documentation either mainstream developmental students into college-level courses with additional supports, provide modularized or compressed courses to allow remedial students to more quickly complete their developmental work, or offer contextualized remedial education within occupational and vocational programs (Unlocking the Gate What We Know About Improving Developmental Education" by Elizabeth Rutschow and Emily Schneider; MDRC, June 2011). Given the percentage of our entering students needing developmental education, UA should pursue all of these evidence based practices (I personally am not a fan of main streaming students in at least some content areas).

Those under-prepared students needing significant preparatory coursework, especially if it involves both math and English as addressed above, should be redirected to certificate and applied associate programs where skill development in those areas is commonly embedded in the content courses; this is consistent with the phrase “…offer contextualized remedial education within occupational and vocational programs” in the article cited above.

Those under-prepared students who are almost college ready should be supported by baccalaureate preparation programs, e.g., UAA’s planned University College or nursing preparation program, and helped to succeed in those programs through mainstreaming with support or accelerated preparatory coursework. Note that the best article I have seen to date on whether accelerating developmental education works well or not just came out and it addresses both writing and math via a multiple institution and multiple year study at CUNY (see "An Examination of the Impact of Accelerating Community College Student's Progression Through Developmental Education" by Michelle Hodara and Shanna Smith Jaggars in the Journal of Higher Education March/April 2014; vol.85, No. 2). That article provides evidence that acceleration works. There is strong evidence that shorter developmental programs have greater success in getting underprepared students into and through collegiate level coursework than longer developmental programs.

UA is also working with Alaska’s K-12 schools more intently than ever before to improve the transition from high school to postsecondary education. This is evident in the joint meetings of the UA Board of Regents and the State Board of Education, the regular meetings and actions of the Alaska Teacher Education Consortium, and the intended broader delivery of courses via the Alaska Learning Network that will help increase Alaska Performance Scholarship eligibility, especially in rural Alaska.

Alaska has among the lowest college going rates among the 50 states; we are typically in the bottom 3 or 4. Clearly delineating college readiness, in this case baccalaureate ready, will help with the broad Alaska communication issue that will, over time, help us improve that rate.

UA has an integrated community college and baccalaureate undergraduate mission. However, we do not provide sufficient guidance to students about the best pathway for students given their preparation. Without such clear guidance, students are not served to the best possible extent. Some faculty members and staff advisors are very good about providing high quality guidance but that is not sufficiently uniform and I am not optimistic that we can positively influence that. Establishing minimum baccalaureate admission standards would make this guidance clear.

Our current process of admitting severely underprepared students to baccalaureate programs has those students move to our urban campuses, they do not complete any program, and they incur greater debt than they would have if they attended their local community campus to improve their preparedness.

Admitting underprepared students into baccalaureate programs and mainstreaming them in even a few areas, weakens the baccalaureate programs at our universities. In well-organized courses, students can and should learn as much from interactions with their peers as from the instructor and course materials.

Some have argued that not admitting these underprepared students into baccalaureate programs will result in fewer students attending our institutions. UAF implemented the minimum baccalaureate admission standards proposed by SAC and did find a reduction in baccalaureate admissions (see study provided by UAF IR Ian Olson that I have shared with the Faculty Alliance) but did not suffer significant overall headcount or student credit hour reduction as a result of the change. They found that the retention rate of underprepared students that were not admitted to baccalaureate programs increased since the change. In addition, they found the retention and graduation rates among those admitted to baccalaureate programs also increased (no surprise given that underprepared students were not admitted).

Many of you have heard me say that UA has found that students completing a course raise their salaries whether they finish a program or not. This comment has been cited as one argument for why the admission standard is not needed. However, the statement is based on aggregate information that does not distinguish between well-prepared and underprepared students. Thus, we cannot say that this statement holds for underprepared students.

I often get asked whether this proposal is all about increasing retention and graduation rates. That is, is this a bean counting exercise? As I have noted above this is mostly about better serving our students. However, UA should not and cannot ignore retention and graduation rates. Alaska needs more college educated individuals and we are currently a significant baccalaureate importing state. President Obama’s higher education agenda intends to connect an institutions’ receipt of federal student aid to completion rates. Completion rates are distinctly connected to entry preparation level. Thus, a minimum standard for baccalaureate programs would help prepare UA for this likely change in federal policy.

Some have asked what specific degree program this minimum admission standard would grant entry into. While it is true that majors can have different admission requirements, e.g., calculus ready for engineering majors, most programs have very similar minimum standards that can and should be more plainly communicated. If minimum baccalaureate admission standards are adopted, they would indicate that students are generally baccalaureate ready and not so underprepared that they could likely achieve any major (even if they needed a bit more work to enter engineering or math); that is the message intended. Several years ago UAF used to have different baccalaureate admission standards for each college and school and the Admissions Department had trouble reviewing student applications in a timely fashion, in part, because of the minor detailed differences between them. In an effort to streamline those admission standards, we sought and received approval from the faculty senate to reduce baccalaureate admission standards to two categories; STEM and everything else. The admissions process is much faster as a result, applicants get informed faster about their status and to the best of my knowledge given my time away from UAF now, and there have been no deleterious effects.