Remedial Requirements

Associate Professor Bridget Terry Long Researches Remediation

Each year, millions of entering freshmen sit down at universities large and small across the country for their first taste of the college life: remedial classes. The courses focus on getting the students up to speed on reading, writing, and mathematics. Federal statistics show that nearly three out of every four institutions of higher education offer at least one remedial class. The total price tag for public colleges alone exceeds $1 billion annually.

But do remedial classes work? It is a question that state policymakers and legislators ask during budget appropriation season. And it is one for which Harvard Graduate School of Education Associate Professor Bridget Terry Long can provide an answer: Yes, generally. Long, an economist, recently completed a study with Eric P. Bettinger of Case Western Reserve University that analyzed the effect of remedial classes on 23,000 students at public universities in Ohio.

Their findings suggest that students in remedial courses are more likely to graduate, or transfer from two-year schools to four-year schools, than students with similar educational backgrounds who did not take remedial classes. The problem is that remedial courses can also prolong the time it takes for a student to get a degree--which can be a source of discouragement for many.

"One huge problem is that a lot of students don't persist, both those who are in remediation and those who are not," Long says. "But what we're seeing over time is that students in remediation are staying longer in school. If they're in community colleges, they tend to transfer up to four-year institutions. Something is happening in remedial programs where they're getting the skillbuilding or the specific supports that are helping them to persist."

"What we're seeing over time is that students in remediation are staying longer in school. If they're in community colleges, they tend to transfer up to four-year institutions. Something is happening in remedial programs where they're getting the skillbuilding or the specific supports that are helping them to persist."

Using data from the Ohio Board of Regents and a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, Long and Bettinger examined the records of the incoming class of 1998. They looked at students with similar educational backgrounds, some of whom enrolled in remedial classes and some of whom did not. (The requirements vary among schools.) What they found was that the students who took remedial classes were 10 percent less likely to drop out of college and nine percent more likely to complete a bachelor's degree within five years. Also, English remediation seemed to have a slightly larger effect than math remediation on these students.

Exactly what works in remediation needs more research, Long says. But her study fills a gap in higher education that rarely gets noticed. Many universities, she says, do not like to talk about remediation, and sometimes list the courses under non-descript names. The common image of a college student, after all, is an 18-year-old entering a four-year college ready for the halls of academe. But in reality, anywhere from 35 percent to 45 percent of entering freshmen take remedial courses because their skills are not up to par for college work, Long explains.

Personal experiences fueled Long's interest in college access. She was raised in Ohio and graduated from high school in the western suburbs of Chicago. She has a large family, and some of her cousins went to college, while others did not. Why? This question drives her research, which ranges from financial aid to academic preparation. But she recognizes that her work has implications for the K–12 system. For example, some 25 percent of the students in Long's study passed high school courses similar to their remedial classes--yet when they came to college, they qualified for the extra help. That should be a bright red flag, she notes.

She also notes that remediation is not a silver bullet. "Remediation will help many students. But it will not help all students," Long says. "Being under-prepared puts you at a disadvantage."

About the Article

A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.