By Samantha Helmold
Delegates introduce a bill to get community colleges to start thinking about having to pay for students who don’t receive a “C” grade or better in developmental education courses.
This bill required that local community colleges, including Baltimore City Community College, to receive only half of the State funding through their funding formulas for the contact hours of students who do not receive a grade of “C” or better in the developmental education courses.
Developmental education courses are defined as a noncredit course that must be completed successfully before or concurrent with a student enrolling in a credit-bearing course.
Senator Ferguson said he never expected the bill to pass. “I offered the bill to start a discussion about the importance of community colleges for Marylanders and the importance of well-designed, purposeful remedial classes.”
Ferguson says he that he will most likely reintroduce the bill again next year with intention to improve the community college experience for first-time post-secondary school attendees.
Carroll Community College Dean of Students, Michael Kiphart, said he opposed the bill to begin with. “I understand it was meant to be a cost cutting measure but I’m not sure it’s good for the student’s as a whole.” Carroll Community College could lose considerable funding – upwards of $50,000 if the bill were to have been passed.
Hagerstown Community College’s Dean of Students, Jessica Chambers, said, “I think the bill was well meaning but it isn’t ideal. I think it was intended to have not only just the college students but the k-12 grade levels to be more prepared. College level students have to meet 24 credits of developmental classes in a specific time frame.”
Under the plan, colleges would have been allowed to increase tuition and fees for developmental education courses. So then will professors pass students just to receive the funding and avoid conflict?
Ferguson explained that if teachers were to just pass students with a grade of “C” to receive the funding, then it would be quite depressing. “The goal was to incentivize improvement, not to design a way for schools to game the system. I have higher expectations than such an outcome would suggest. If that were the community college’s response, a much more drastic reform would clearly be needed.”
Kiphart explains that he would like to think that it wouldn’t happen at the institution. “I believe institutions would do different developmental work to not lose those dollars. I was very much interested in the bill; I used to even be on the board of Higher Education Committee. This isn’t going to change the students but it would be bad to take the funding away.”
Chambers says that she doesn’t believe that the professors will pass the students with a “C” grade. “Students are very much focused on learning and the professors are focused on teaching the material. They want them to know it. If we just have professors pass students with the minimal grade, then they won’t know the material. They need to know it inside and outside the classroom.”
In Maryland, depending on the college, between 45 percent and 80 percent of first-time community college students enroll in at least one developmental course. Frederick Community College had at least 74.0 percent of students enrolled in developmental courses and 73.6 percent were actually passing these classes. Hagerstown Community College had 65.2 percent enrolled and only 46.1 percent passing, and Carroll Community College had 47.2 enrolled and over 58.8 passing the classes. The information could be found in the 2014 Fiscal and Policy notes regarding the bill.
Dr. Kiphart explained that these classes that students take, especially in math and English, would increase the non-success rate of students. “These students might not need the entire class so they take the minimal module of the developmental class. It’s still necessary to have them.”
Kiphart said he believes that Florida community colleges are giving students the opportunity to go ahead and take the regular college level class, even if they test into the developmental class. He isn’t sure what that might do for the students overall.
Chambers said that if it came down to it, the bill would need to be reevaluated if the funding was threatened that much due to the deciding of whether or not students need to be in those classes.
Ferguson said that the community colleges as a whole are doing well but there is always room to improve.