Economic summit highlights time it takes students to graduate college

PROVIDENCE – Newly calculated and troubling graduation and remedial education rates at Rhode Island’s public institutions of higher education are the impetus for proposed performance-based funding aid to the schools.
That was the message from a state Senate-led economic summit, “Connecting Workforce and Education,” held Wednesday night at Rhode Island College.
Cheryl Orr Dixon, a consultant for Complete College America, a nonprofit education reform group, cited on-time graduation rates of only 2 percent for a two-year associate’s degree at Community College of Rhode Island, and for four-year bachelor’s degrees, 15 percent at RIC, and 41 percent at the University of Rhode Island.
Comparative national data was not provided.
If three years is used for completing an associate’s degree and six years for a bachelor’s, the rates rise, to 8.2 percent for CCRI, 43 percent for RIC and 63 percent for URI – rates Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed says are not good enough. But legislative backing for change is what’s needed, Weed said.
“Any time there’s going to be change in education, it’s critical to have political support,” she said.
A proposed bill directs Bill Purcell, commissioner of postsecondary education, to implement performance-based funding beginning in fiscal year 2018. Any new state funding greater than the fiscal 2016 base amount would be tied to success in achieving goals associated with the number of degrees earned in certain time frames for full-time students, for instance, Weed said.
After the presentation, Purcell noted that the R.I. Board of Education in November approved an action plan to address recommendations from Complete College America. CCA’s recommendations include performance-based funding and helping students manage structured plans for degrees instead of focusing on individual courses.
Dixon also addressed remedial education, using CCRI as an example. AT CCRI, 74 percent of students need some form of remedial coursework, yet under 59 percent complete required courses and 30 percent complete the “gateway” reading, writing and math courses associated with that work, she said.
Dixon called for not doing remedial work, or “developmental education” as a prerequisite, but instead doing the college level work concurrently and providing “more coordinated support when the student needs it.”
Taking too much time to complete remedial work and degrees “is the enemy,” Purcell said. He said performance measures and what to incorporate into a funding formula could be in hand by this coming December, whether or not the bill passes.
“We need to speed up the process in a sequence that allows [students] to graduate on time,” he said.
“Make sure your [remedial] math is the right math,” added Dixon. Quantitative math and statistics is often more relevant to a career path than algebra, she said.

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