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Gates Foundation Gives $16.5 Million for Community-College Programs

June 30, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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:: education reform,; community colleges,; students,; education

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Those that comment and explain how the numbers in the "middle class" would increase and proverty would decrease if a free college education was provided to all that want it, begin with a wrong, idealized premise. They presume that the POwers To Be who control most things in this country want the middle class to increase.
The increasing middle class would interfere with their control of things and would want to have a hand and say in how this country is run. It is important to the Powers To Be to keep as many people as possible with their noses to the grindstone just barely keeping their heads above water so their focus is on survival, but still an able working body, so they don't have time, energy or the inclination to try to "fix" what they see as wrong.
Wouldn't you wonder why it is they can't figure out just how easy and more cost efficient it is to improve the lives of everyone and drive down the costs of government as a consequence. It's just plain common sense when one thinks about it...unless you are among those that see their power controls threatened by a burgeoning middle class. So, periodically they allow or create economic castastrophes to set back a tremendous number of people ( the shrinking middle class) so they contain maintain their "Company Store" - people barely can have time to live, let alone get involved in the running of this country because they "...owe their souls to the Company Store".

Beverly of MD 1:09PM January 08, 2011

$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

cjayor of MO 3:05PM July 23, 2009

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.

Mary Burrowes of FL 11:35AM July 23, 2009

Gates Foundation Gives $16.5 Million for Community-College Programs

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