BOOSTING THE BASICS: DESPITE THE STIGMA, ENROLLMENT IN COLLEGE COURSES BOOMS

Colleges across the nation are developing programs aimed at helping students, especially beginning freshmen, who feel unprepared for academic work at the college level.

The problem of students arriving unprepared isn't widespread at Southeast Missouri State University, which offers a diverse list of programs aimed at helping students get the most of their college career, said Dr. Fred Janzow, dean of the school of university studies.

Yet Mark Merliss, who attends the University of Connecticut, said he didn't feel prepared when he arrived on campus last year.

Despite his college-prep courses at an outstanding urban high school, Merliss said he felt shaky. "I'll sit for a half hour thinking of a word ... I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn't know how to say it," said the lanky 18-year-old.

Eager to succeed Merliss plans a career in golf course management he was relieved to find English 104, "Basic Writing."

It's remedial, though that word does not appear in the catalogue. Like its companion, Math 101, English 104 is for undergraduates smart enough but not quite ready for the University of Connecticut.

"I looked at college like, Wow!' This is a big place," Merliss said, brown eyes shining, his 6-foot-2 inches sprawled amid the cramped bunk bed, books and electronic gear crowding his dorm room. "I didn't want to be lost."

Students like Merliss are on the mind of new U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. In a speech to leaders of private colleges during his second week on the job, the former Houston schools superintendent assailed America's public schools for sending students to college unprepared.

Noting nearly a third of college freshmen need remedial work, Paige said, "College students should be taking college courses, not remedial classes."

Debate has swirled in recent years around the issue of remedial college courses. This may intensify with the Bush administration's stated intention of improving the nation's public schools.

Educators in a quandary

The problem of students coming to campuses unprepared isn't new, Janzow said. Changing demographics of college students and a more culturally and ethnically diverse student body are some of the things college instructors have been considering when structuring courses, he said.

The term "remedial" carries a stigma, and so some schools use terms like "developmental" or "compensatory," if they name the classes at all.

And students admitted to the most competitive schools may need extra prepping when they arrive.

All Harvard College freshmen take a writing course, Expository 20. For those not completely ready, there's Expos 10, a voluntary, introductory version.

"It is in no way remedial," insisted Nancy Sommers, director of Harvard's writing program. Every year, Expos 10 is taken by about 100 of the incoming 1,650 freshmen, the enrollment determined by a writing test everyone takes the first week.

"You're expected to hit the ground running here," Sommers said. "Some students come from areas where they just haven't had opportunities to write as much."

Unreasonable' expectation

Not everyone thinks remedial courses signify a problem.

"It's unreasonable to think everybody is college-ready, just because they finished high school," said Hunter Boylan, head of the National Center for Developmental Education in Boone, N.C.

Southeast offers a university studies course that explains to new students what college-level instructors expect, how to take tests and how to manage their time, Janzow said.

"I'm not one to blame the public schools," said Boylan, also a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University. "We take in tens of millions of children every year with a huge diversity in talents and backgrounds, and schools are expected to kick them out 12 years later, college-ready."

Students like Mark Merliss comprise a sizable minority. A federal survey in fall 1995, the latest available, found 29 percent of first-time college freshmen enrolled in remedial courses.

While the largest percentage of remedial students -- 41 percent -- were at two-year schools, 22 percent of freshmen at four-year public institutions and 13 percent at private four-year colleges required such academic grooming, the survey found. Math is the single biggest area of poor college preparation, followed by composition and reading.

The survey also found roughly three-fourths of remedial students successfully finished those courses, and most as freshmen.

A new survey is under way this fall, with results due early next year.

Varying standards

Colleges differ in the readiness they require, and how they gauge it.

Southeast places students in English courses based on their evaluation and scoring after a series of written essays. Math placement is determined by ACT scores. And students are allowed to challenge their placement, Janzow said.

The basic writing course taught as English 104 at the University Connecticut is about the same as English 105, the standard composition course at the university. Students analyze literature and learn to hone their views in writing, including the art of revision.

Remedial education, by any name, has a long history.

A hundred years ago, 60 percent of college students took math and English prep courses, Boylan said. It was college, not high school, that groomed students for higher education.

After World War II, young veterans filling colleges on the GI Bill needed refresher courses.

The next big surge was their children, the baby boomers, breaking barriers of class and race getting into college and some in need of basics they had never received.

All this was fairly routine until the push for K-12 assessment tests arrived in the early 1980s.

"There's this myth that huge numbers of unprepared students have descended on higher education in the last decades," Boylan said. "The fact is no one had bothered to count them."

And when people started to count, two of the largest, most open university systems became lightning rods for those who say remedial classes have no place on a college campus.

The City University of New York is phasing out remedial courses in its bachelor degree programs serving more than 128,000 students. They will be no more in fall 2001.

The California State University system, with some 220,000 full-time undergraduates, decreed in fall 1998 that freshmen who fail its remedial courses must leave and get basics they need at a community college.

But responsibility rests with students and the university as well, said Susan Steele, vice provost for undergraduate education and instruction at all six UConn campuses. While students must apply themselves, she said, "there is a real question about what is our obligation to our students if we've admitted them, to make sure that they're successful."

Southeast offers several options -- a summer academy, on-campus workshops, and help from the Learning Enrichment Center -- to boost students' skills.

"There are things that we can do on campus to assure the students," Janzow said. "And it's been successful."