The following policy recommendations point to potential strategies that states, systems, and individual colleges and universities can consider to accelerate students’ time to completion.
Federal financial aid policy options
- Develop financial aid plans that are based on multi-year enrollments. The annual application and re-award of financial aid puts students’ degree progression in jeopardy should their financial aid situation vary over relatively short time periods. A procedure for planning financial aid based on a multi-year degree path should be considered. This plan could be adjusted as students progress, and it would eliminate the effect of the lag between reported income information and enrollment expenses.
- Devise aid policies to include incentives for degree completion. Both federal and state financial aid can be structured to incentivize student completion and meet the needs of the modern student. For example, higher amounts of aid could be provided during the first year of college to leverage students' completion of 20 credits, an important predictive milestone in degree completion and further enrollment. Alternatively, financial aid could increase as the ratio of credits earned to credits required increases to incentivize students to take higher credit loads to complete a degree expeditiously. Students should be allowed to use financial aid to take summer courses and all distance/online learning options. Financial aid formulas should be recalculated so that a smaller percentage of student earnings count towards aid, removing existing penalties.
States and system policy options
- Realign degree requirements and common core courses. Across universities, many degree programs require a combination of both general education and/or major requirements that significantly exceed a two- or four-year timeframe for an AA or BA degree. States and systems have begun to contend with the growth of credit requirements. Where systems have defined a common set of courses needed for a degree, these are offered across two- and four-year campuses. A subset of these systems have added common course numbering to this core making them universally recognizable to institutions and students alike (for examples, see the Degree/Program Requirements section under Policy Levers).
- Devise incentives for students to complete a degree expeditiously. Some states have attempted to decrease time to completion by capping credits limiting the number of credits that can be taken within one degree. This policy can have a negative effect for some students, especially those who have changed majors. Instead, states can offer students incentives in the form of increased financial support, or discounted charges, for higher course loads that would allow students to complete degrees either on time or in an accelerated timeframe. These policies offer the same potential benefit as credit caps without penalizing students who may have made a decision that placed them over the credit cap. Texas is an example of a state that has both policies in place: credit limits and incentives for completing on-time (B-On-Time Loans).
- Offer compressed time - or modularized - developmental education sequences to advance students towards credit-bearing courses. As students test into remediation at several different skill levels, there is not one developmental education sequence appropriate for all students. Many students who test just under the placement test cutoff may benefit from a refresher course to minimize time in developmental education before enrolling in credit-bearing courses. Modularized courses can accelerate the amount of time that students placed at a lower skill level spend in developmental education. Other states are trying open-entry/exit courses where students can begin and leave based on competency, shortening the amount of "seat time" in courses (Collins 2008).
In addition, some systems are allowing students who need a minimal amount of developmental education coursework to be co-enrolled in a community college (e.g., to complete developmental requirements) and a public university (e.g., to access credit-bearing courses as part of a degree program). This is usually done via system- or institutional-level agreements. For example, students in Tennessee can attend the Kingsport Center for Higher Education which combines the resources of five institutions, both AA- and BA-granting, into one central location.
- Improve resources, incentives and information to ensure successful transfer. Several states and systems have created incentives for students to transfer from a community college to a BA-granting college or university. Some state systems - including Washington - offer priority admission to state colleges and universities for community college transfer students who have completed an associate's degree. Others guarantee full transfer of credit and upper-division status for community college students. These states include New Jersey, North Dakota, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Oklahoma (NCHEMS, State Policies on Student Transitions: Results of a Fifty-State Inventory).
Financial incentives for transfer have developed in two forms - incentives to institutions that successfully enroll transfer students (e.g. Ohio), and incentives in the form of financial aid to students who enroll and matriculate at a public university after completing courses at a community college (e.g. Massachusetts and Texas).
More comprehensive information on transfer is being provided to students via online technology. Some states and systems are developing their own web sites; examples include California, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, and Kentucky. Other systems and institutions participate in larger online resource tools, such as the National Articulation and Transfer Network, u.select, or the privately owned CollegeTransfer.net.
College and University Practice
- Increase course availability by using alternative course delivery modes such as distance learning. Institutions should address issues related to delays experienced by students having to wait for access to required courses. The most cost-effective means to accomplish this may be in utilizing technology to offer courses on-line or through other forms of distance learning.
- Strengthen advising programs, learning communities, and/or supplemental instruction offerings. These student supports can be a critical factor in improving academic performance for all students, including those enrolled in developmental education courses. Critical milestones include passing courses and accumulating credits in a timely manner. Hofstra University (NY) decided to shift all student advising services to the student services division, alleviating faculty of advising duties. This allowed the university to assign all entering student a counselor for their entire college career, regardless of any change in major/degree program. University administrators feel that this change has allowed them to streamline their response to students, and identify gaps in service.
For students needing to complete a developmental education sequence, counseling becomes critical to ensure that they get into the right course(s) and advance to credit-bearing courses. In some cases, integrating developmental education coursework with credit-bearing courses can also provide additional instruction to students to meet developmental and degree requirements (see examples in the Policy Levers section on Developmental Education). Through the use of these student supports, higher-skill students in developmental courses could take and complete credit-bearing, introductory-level college courses.
- Utilize disaggregated institutional data to track student progress and document time to completion patterns. While most colleges are aware of the average number of academic terms it takes a student to complete an AA or BA degree, more sophisticated analyses can be conducted to identify relevant trends in credit accumulation patterns and potential blockage points. In certain states and systems, system-level agencies are responsible for providing access to this data requiring shared responsibility between systems and institutions. Conducting disaggregated analyses - both at the system- and the institution-level - will allow for better understanding of the ways in which academic policies could offer support to degree completion for certain subgroups of students. Additionally, the impacts of higher credit loads per semester can be tested as a means to facilitate expediated time to completion.