Gates Foundation Gives $16.5 Million for Community-College Programs
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation renewed its commitment to improving college graduation rates for low-income and minority students by giving $16.5 million in grant money to expand remedial education programs at the community-college level.
Fifteen community colleges and five states with model remedial education programs received the grants last week. The model programs share qualities such as accelerating the speed at which students complete remedial courses, providing students one-on-one support with class work and homework, and offering courses with open entry and exit dates so that students who miss registration deadlines can still enroll, says Hilary Pennington, director of special initiatives in the Gates Foundation's United States program. She added that the foundation hopes the grant recipients can act as replicable models to other community colleges and states looking to improve their remedial education offerings.
The need for strong remedial education programs is vast, according to a recently released report by Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit research and advocacy agency. The report indicates that about 60 percent of students enrolling in community colleges across the nation take remedial education classes to shore up their mastery of basic academic skills. This statistic tops 90 percent for low-income and minority students at some community colleges, yet the number of students moving from remedial education classes to college-level courses can drop as low as 15 percent, according to the Gates Foundation.
Pennington says the focus of the foundation's postsecondary success strategy is helping more students not only go to college but go through college and that remedial education classes at open-access community colleges are needed to achieve that goal.
This is the first in a series of grants the Gates Foundation plans to award over the next few years to continue funding efforts to "crack the code of accelerating academic catch-up," Pennington says.
The Lumina and Ford foundations have also invested in remedial education at the community-college level.
Tags: community colleges | students | education | education reform
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Reader Comments
President Obama's Big Plans for Community Colleges
$12 billion for community college education, what a boost this would be! As one of the charterers of the fully accredited St. Louis Community College System (SLCCS) and the East St. Louis Community College (ESLCC), I am delighted. Thank you President Obama
Free College
Free college education is needed if we are to get out of this Depression and have a fairer society. Many people are in poverty earning miserable minimum wages and although they want to study further, they simply cannot because costs are out of their reach. If European countries can provide free college education to their people, why not the United States? That would be a sure way for someone to go from working poor to middle class.
Obama's Plan for Community Colleges
Barack Obama has big plans for community colleges, to the tune of $12 billion, on the assumption that community colleges are the key to providing people with the high-tech skills needed to get the jobs of the future. There's an interesting piece on the details of his program at:
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2009/July/Understanding-Obama-s-Community-College-Makeover.html
FYI: Louisiana has decided to implement a separate career track for people who don't want to attend four-year colleges. Community colleges could be just thing they need to get employable skills without attending getting an undergraduate degree.
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