Cal State ending no-credit classes
University officials and some past critics of the plan are expressing cautious optimism
Nica Lampe, a freshman at Cal State Fullerton, didn’t know her math class this fall was part of a revolution throughout the California State University system. She was delighted, however, to reap the benefits: avoiding the now abolished remedial classes that offer no college credit and instead enrolling in a college-level course that fills a bachelor’s diploma requirement.
Her high school math grades and weak math skills definitely would have sent her to a remedial course, she said.
“I would not have been happy. It would seem like a waste of time, not getting any credit for it but still paying for it” said Lampe, who is studying to be a physical therapist.
In contrast, her current introductory Math for Liberal Arts course, by providing extra hours of practice and tutoring for students like her, “makes everything so much easier.”
She is not alone in her positive assessment of the dramatic and previously controversial changes instituted this fall that got rid of no-credit remedial courses at the 23 Cal State campuses. To be sure, it is too soon to evaluate the shift without compiling grades at semester’s end and then seeing how students perform in higher level courses. Plus, implementation has not been seamless, with some confusion about assigning faculty and students to the revised for-credit courses, professors say.
Yet in general, so far, university officials and some past critics of the plan are expressing cautious optimism that getting rid of no-credit remedial education, also known as developmental education, will move students toward graduation more quickly without lowering academic standards.
“It’s going very well. So far, we have had really good reports from our campuses,” said one of the plan’s architects, James Minor, hired two years ago to be the Cal State system’s “senior strategist for academic success and inclusive excellence.”
And while he conceded some modifications probably will be needed in the program, “the chaos and negative outcomes that were predicted are just not there.”
Students “so far are proving if you give them a highquality course and a highquality instructor who believes in them and give them the opportunity to take a college level course, they can indeed be successful,” Minor said.
The changes are sweeping. Last year about 26,000 freshmen — about 40 percent of the entering class — had to take at least one remedial course, and sometimes more, in English or math or both. About 880 such remedial sections offered last year have been replaced or merged with redesigned classes. The most common are so-called “corequisite classes,” which add review and tutoring sessions, and “stretch classes,” which extend a one-semester course to two.
While some campuses already had the new-style courses, the system-wide change required much work over spring and summer to train teachers and redesign material. Nearly $12 million was allocated over this year and last for the switch.
Faculty leaders had protested that the scheduled fall 2018 startup was too hasty for the ambitious overhaul and called for a year’s delay. But Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White refused and moved ahead as part of a larger campaign to improve graduation rates. Too many students had gotten