<p>Two-year colleges enroll nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States. How to better educate them is critical to increasing economic mobility.</p>
<p>A lot of similar issues at the lower tier state college where I teach. </p>
<p>Off topic - 506 square feet, wow. I guess it’s easy to clean.</p>
<p>I think it needs to be mentioned that community colleges are not all the same. The cc I attended in small town Midwest was a popular destination even for many top students. Students routinely transferred and finished 4 year degrees ( or more). I realize that I attended eons ago, but that hasn’t changed much at that particular school. Sure a lot of improvement is needed at some cc’s but not across the board.</p>
<p>Yes, in NYC we have good 4 year public Us. CCs ARE cheaper, but most students who did okay in high school head for one of the CUNY campuses (unless, of course, they go away.) Every borough has at least one 4 year CUNY. </p>
<p>And CCs, for the most part, aren’t more “upclose and personal.” They are very large. </p>
<p>
Agree. 28% of students in my kids’ high school are attending 2-year colleges.</p>
<p>I think NYC is unique in that almost half of public school students live in households where English is not spoken and 60 percent are immigrants or children of immigrants. </p>
<p>“I think NYC is unique in that almost half of public school students live in households where English is not spoken and 60 percent are immigrants or children of immigrants.”</p>
<p>Hi, oldmom. Love your avatar. You’ll find that’s ^ true for certain other urban centers as well. 
And the estimate for NYC (“almost half”) is true for the entire state of CA. In fact, in many of the central urban areas of the larger metropolises in CA (LA, SF), enrollment in pubic schools is 99.9% minority, of which anywhere between 65 and 90% are second-language speakers. </p>
<p>Difficult for me to get a percentage comparison of the 60% immigrant figure for NYC. In the state of CA as a whole, though, there are an estimated 22+% of illegall immigrant children (not children born to the undocumented, who would not be illegal, of course). Add to that naturally many legal immigrant children (or progeny of legally immigrated adults).</p>
<p>I do think all of these considerations affect CC enrollment, yes. That is, in the CC’s located in/near the “central” urban centers, the student bodies are quite different from the suburban CC’s near the affluent neighborhoods, by a long shot. The urban-proximate CC’s have to present enormous challenges for those instructors, and I have nothing but admiration for those willing to meet that challenge. OTOH, I will say myself, as one of those who teach ESL students, it is sort of “the chance of a lifetime” if you really love your job as much as I do. And I have heard some of these CC instructors speak about the enormous satisfaction in teaching literacy and proficiency. </p>
<p>Finally, in many urban-proximate CC’s the student body will include many re-entry students (both sexes). Those will include adults of all ages, some immigrants, some not. (Veterans, the employed or under-employed getting a new skill, finishing an AA, readying for a 4-yr college, etc.) The median age of student bodies in urban-proximate CC’s is usually much older than those in suburban-proximate CC’s. It’s a motley crew, for sure. Don’t know if that corresponds at all to NYC statistics.</p>
<p>I’ve decided that my donations will go to my local community college rather than my alma mater. My local CC needs the money more. </p>
<p>I’ve also become interested in their math remediation program. The majority of students who go to CC for the first time test into remedial math (this is true at a lot of four year colleges too). Many schools are finding that [students</a> learn more in STEM classes if lectures are replaced by more active learning (NY Times)](<a href=“Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science - The New York Times”>Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science - The New York Times), and although the linked article talks about intro classes at four-year schools, the results are just as true at CCs. </p>
<p>My local CC does math remediation by having a set of math modules, which students progress through at their own rates. One group will be working on fractions, while another one will be working on solving problems about areas and perimeters, for example. Students are required to come to class, but the classroom is nothing like the standard math class. Instead, the instructor circles about, helping different students and student groups, at some points giving a little mini-lecture about an issue that a lot of student seem to be struggling with. The school has been finding that students who take the new format remedial courses are a lot more successful in follow-up math courses.</p>
<p>^I tried that basic approach the last time I had to teach remedial math (some years ago now). It didn’t really work any better than anything else.</p>
<p>The program at this college involves the entire math department and they reworked the entire remedial curriculum. For them, it does work better than their previous approach. Crucially, because so many students place into the remedial classes they can separate out entire groups into one classroom. So you’d have one group of 15 students, say, who were working on fractions, and elsewhere another group who had finished up fractions and were doing linear equations. It’s not an approach that could be duplicated by a single teacher with a single class.</p>
<p>^The “progressing at their own rates” wasn’t possible, but having students work individually or in groups on the topic at hand and circling around answering questions and checking progress interspersed with mini-lectures was. Unfortunately, students do their best to thwart the efforts of the professor and a lot of students made little to no perceivable progress. Part of the reason I swore off that course.</p>
<p>I’ve observed some of the classrooms that were using this program. Students don’t come to class sometimes, and they sometimes fool around in class instead of working. But I didn’t observe any students doing their best to thwart the professor’s efforts, and I’m not sure why I would expect to see any students trying to thwart the professor. Why would they? </p>
<p>Remediation is hard work for both students and teachers. I’ve learned to be happy with small gains, because there is not going to be any silver bullet. If a program gets more students to succeed, I’m happy.</p>
<p>It might be different at different schools. The hope is that everyone who actually takes the time to go to school when it’s no longer legally required (ie taking classes at a community college) would be motivated to learn and wouldn’t try to thwart the professor’s efforts, but in every environment there’s going to be some people who are screwing around and don’t care about learning. I can see how a professor that got stuck with students like that would be frustrated and unwilling to try again.</p>
<p>I may have misunderstood sylvan. When s/he said “thwart the efforts of the professor” I interpreted that as actively trying to undermine the professor’s efforts, rather than just screwing around. Students screw around in any classroom. </p>
<p>When I was in the remediation module classrooms, I observed classes that in aggregate were more engaged than classes who just listened to lectures. It turns out that listening to lectures is a pretty bad way for people to learn; even good students have trouble paying attention for more than about ten minutes. It’s easier to pay attention when you’re doing something than when you’re passively listening to a lecture.</p>