The Idea Library details policies, programs and practices that states, systems, and colleges and universities have implemented to impact time to completion.
Ideas include:
Student success programs are intended to provide students with academic and social supports, including a deeper understanding of course content. A learning community is one type of success program, which typically is comprised of two or more courses in which themed curriculum are designed to connect the courses. This program structure usually serves a small group – or cohort – of students. Other success programs can include advising, mentoring, drop-in support centers, and courses (credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing). Characteristically, the success programs provide information on study skills, time management, academic policies, and clarification of a student’s goals. Some programs are voluntary; others may be required for certain students based on particular characteristics. These programs can take place during the academic year; others are offered in the summer or pre-college.
Colleges that have chosen to implement success programs have often done so to improve students’ transition to college. Student success programs, most notably learning communities, have been proven particularly effective for first-year students. This preparation can have an impact on time to completion by encouraging students to engage in their educational communities, form their own academic expectations, and develop important connections for improved persistence and completion. Learning communities, specifically, can be used to integrate developmental skills and introductory-level coursework into credit-bearing courses; these supports may be a part of courses or be supplemental to them. Students can receive additional help in completing course requirements, potentially passing the course in a timely manner.
Typically, most student success programs require additional educational resources in the form of extra faculty preparation and faculty time as well as additional student time and effort.
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Intrusive advising involves a proactive role by advisers to initiate contact with students, rather than relying on students to seek out advising services.
These advising services are in response to evidence that many students, especially those who may be considered at risk for dropping out, feel little connection to their college or university. Students may be reluctant to initiate anything but the bare meeting requirements with their academic advisers, many of whom are likely to be randomly assigned before a student declares a major. The result can be students with a lack of accurate, timely information about course requirements or scheduling. In the absence of good information, students may not enroll in appropriate courses, or in the correct sequence, thus extending their time to completion.
A technology-based advising model usually draws on early warning systems, which are intended to alert colleges, departments, faculty, student support services, and students of poor academic performance. They use academic record-keeping systems programmed to deliver information to relevant parties, often through email. As these systems allow for built-in follow-up and additional data, they can also be used for institutional research purposes.
Early warning systems are likely to require adequate academic record-keeping systems, and proactive participation from staff in advising roles to relay information or scaffold typical electronic communication. Many colleges and universities have opted to hire full-time advisers to increase students’ consistent access to advising services and to ensure that students get the assistance they need with course selection and scheduling, other degree requirements, and financial aid to improve persistence.
These systems maintain student contact with the institution, and thus may contribute to consistent student persistence. Used effectively, the combination of advising and early warning systems can help reduce time to completion by supporting student efforts to pass courses, and increase the likelihood that students enroll in and complete courses needed to advance towards a degree.
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Making support services readily available to students can play a role in persistence in that a connection to the college or university becomes easier to maintain. Co-locating these services in a central campus locations, or offering multiple services via a single online portal, provides students with more convenient access to both academic and non-academic supports. Needed information becomes more readily available. This is especially important for those students who do not follow a full-time, consecutive-term enrollment pattern, work off-campus more than ten hours per week, and have non-academic or personal obligations. In such cases, convenience is an important consideration.
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Most reports on time to completion are based on large-scale, multi-institutional data, typically from a state or system-wide agency. As a result, many individual institutions are not clearly informed about their own student patterns with regard to time to completion. Once institutions are aware of how long it takes students to complete both general education and major degree requirements, they can identify policy choices by which to accelerate student time to completion, including student support, advising, as well as course planning and scheduling.
Coordinated use of a standardized tool across college departments would provide useful information for administrators who are considering policy alterations such as changes in degree requirements and student advising, as well as for resource planning purposes.
Institutions of varying sizes and selectivity – including Bowling Green University, the University of Wisconsin, and campuses within the University of California system – have performed these types of "time to completion" analyses typically on an annual basis. Another example is a web-based analysis calculator developed by Florida's Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement (CERPRI) to estimate the percent chance of bachelor's degree completion in a given amount of time for a variety of student profiles and attendence scenarios (CERPRI is no longer in existence, but the website and tools will be available for researchers and policy makers until further notice).
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Research posits that degree programs across many BA-granting institutions have been subject to "credit creep" - an increase in the number of courses and credits required as part of major and/or general education requirements. Many states and systems - Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia, among others - have begun to review degree requirements, especially for programs with requirements that stretch beyond the traditional 120 credits for a BA degree, or the equivalent of a full-time credit load for eight semesters. Some systems have set system-wide standards for the number of credits in a degree in an effort to both standardize these requirements and expedite degree completion.
A few states – including Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, and New Jersey – have taken additional steps to standardize lower-division courses that are typically offered at almost every institution. These courses that are part of the general education requirements often need to be satisfied in addition to major degree requirements. In some cases, universal course numbering has also been applied, meaning that these courses are commonly recognized by faculty, advisers, and students, and would make students less vulnerable to loss of credits as they transfer within the same system.
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In most states, annual state funding formulas for public colleges and universities are heavily based on student enrollments. That is, state funding to a college increases as enrollment increases. While this funding basis addresses the additional costs of educating more students, it does little to provide incentives to colleges to prioritize student degree completion, or even on-time completion. Colleges and universities may be more likely to invest in supporting student outcomes in a state that provides performance-based rewards (e.g., student credit accumulation or annual progress to degree). Indeed, enrollment-based funding may provide indirect disincentives for colleges to prioritize expeditious completion.
Ohio is currently implementing a new higher education funding formula system that will fund based on the number of individual courses that students successfully complete rather than utilizing enrollment data. While the state has offered performance funding for over a decade, the changes will move Ohio to an entirely performance-based system. Undergraduate student course completion would be weighted against an institution’s number of “at risk” students, and predicted graduation rates. In other words, colleges that enroll more "at risk" students would receive more latitude on their completion rates. The majority of these changes will apply to the state’s fourteen universities. The twenty-four university branch campuses and twenty-three community colleges in the state would have slightly different formulas.
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The number of dual enrollment programs, which enroll high school students in courses at local colleges for academic credits, is growing. The goal of these programs is to provide high school students with college credit and raise college-going expectations in the process. Dual enrollment can obviate the need for some developmental sequences, as students have the opportunity to meet college-ready standards and/or pass placement tests. In addition, students can complete introductory-level courses while in high school.
Dual enrollment programs typically take the form of partnerships between high schools and one or two local community or public BA-granting institutions. Using the dual/concurrent enrollment program in Minnesota as an example, students can often receive college credit by taking:
The colleges agree to accept work done by participating students as credit toward their degrees. As students earn credits that satisfy general education requirements, students face fewer degree requirements, and have improved preparation for subsequent college courses.
Proposals for restructuring the baccalaureate degree into three years, instead of the traditional four, have garnered much attention recently. Some ideas focus on completing the conventional 120 credits in a shorter period by encouraging students to take higher course loads each term, during inter-sessions, or in some cases, year-round enrollment. Others have focused on decreasing the number of credits to a degree, so that the bachelors degree becomes more specialized.
Notably, the Spellings Commission Report authors have suggested that a three-year undergraduate degree could improve educational productivity and decrease costs for both students and the public. Proponents posit if costs are based on per-credit charges, programs that consolidate comparable numbers of credits into a shorter period save few costs. Faculty across several states, and particular colleges, have argued against the notion of the three-year degree in light of contemporary workforce demands and entering student needs, and the need to make most colleges' general education curriculum far more specific to complete in less time.
The proposal to compress a four-year degree into three years may have the greatest relevance to traditional-age, full-time enrolled students who are able to take and complete higher credit loads each semester, and commit to a summer semester. For all other students – those who enroll part-time, those who can not financially manage higher credit loads, or those who need to complete developmental education credits – other acceleration options should be considered.
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Alternative course delivery generally refers to course content that is delivered in a method other than in a traditional classroom setting. Usually, it takes the form of audio-visual, telecommunications, or online delivery. This may be referred to as distance learning, distributed learning, or online learning. These offerings can be organized at the system- or institution-level.
Alternative course delivery modes offer great flexibility in terms of access; courses are neither place- nor time-bound. For example, with online course delivery, students can access coursework and engage in course activities at any time and from anywhere they have access to a computer. The flexibility offered by alternative course delivery can improve students’ ability to complete a degree expeditiously.
Of note, as online enrollments have continued to increase significantly over the past decade, course completion rates have not followed. More research is needed on course-taking and completion patterns within this medium, and on which groups of students may derive the most benefit.
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For public colleges and universities, enrollment data typically exists within system-level data files in an aggregate form, organized by sector (community college, comprehensive university) and institution. Often these data systems are not organized by student-unit records in which students have a unique identifiers. The lack of unique identifier makes it difficult for colleges to track students over time, including through in-system transfers, or intermittent enrollment.
Allowing administrators to access student-unit record data across institutions, or sectors, in a given system can provide more accurate data on time to completion. It can also mitigate delays often caused by missing data: lack of credit at transfer, delays in registration, and financial aid ineligibility. Beyond avoiding bureaucratic delays, better data management can facilitate needed analysis on time to completion to leverage policy and programs changes, and remove identified barriers. Putting this information in the hands of students (e.g. information on degree requirements) could also potentially expedite students' path to completion.
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Proto-majors are concentrations of courses within a disciplinary area that allow students in their first and second year to focus on courses in a more general area in which they feel they are likely to major (e.g. arts, humanities, life sciences). By selecting a "proto-major" soon after matriculation, students can complete both general education requirements and potential major requirements early in their academic careers. They can also be better informed about choices for majors early in their coursework, at a time when changing majors will not result in additional prerequisites. If students do change majors, they may do so with minimal credit loss and only if choosing a major outside the a larger academic discipline of the proto-major.
More on Alignment of Degree Requirements
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