Community Colleges and the Access Effect: Why Open Admissions Suppresses Achievement

By J. Scherer and M. Anson

Taking on the cherished principle that community colleges should be open to all students with a high school education, Scherer and Anson argue that open access policies and lenient federal financial aid laws harm students and present the case for raising the minimum requirements for community college entry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781137331007

Book preview

Community Colleges and the Access Effect

Why Open Admissions Suppresses Achievement

Juliet Lilledahl Scherer and Mirra Leigh Anson

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND THE ACCESS EFFECT

Copyright © Juliet Lilledahl Scherer and Mirra Leigh Anson, 2014.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2014 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®

in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978–1–137–33600–2 (hc)

ISBN: 978–1–137–33601–9 (pbk)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scherer, Juliet Lilledahl, 1974–

Community colleges and the access effect : why open admissions suppresses achievement / Juliet Lilledahl Scherer and Mirra Leigh Anson.

    pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–1–137–33600–2 (alk. paper)—

ISBN 978–1–137–33601–9 (alk. paper)

 1. Community colleges—United States—Admission. I. Anson, Mirra Leigh, 1978– II. Title.

LB2351.2.S335 2014

378.1′5430973—dc23                                  2013039919

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: April 2014

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For our children:

Olivia and Lena;

Jenna and Jacob;

Alex, Annekah, and Andrea;

Daniel and Abby;

Owen and Cora;

Julian, Will, and Audrey;

Mason and Cole;

Luke, Dalton, and Conner;

Lucas, Noah, Graham, and Lucy;

Maia and Elena;

Tyler and Ella;

Luke and Sydney;

Rylee and Samantha;

Riley and Evan;

Phin and Merrick;

Sam, Jersie, Toren, and Deklan;

Andrew and Cameron;

Dylan, Morgan, and Madison;

Jackson, Brock, and Max;

and, truly, every child.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Open Access in Higher Education

Chapter 2

The Trouble in Tucson

Chapter 3

The Price of Completion at Any Cost

Chapter 4

The Perils of Paying for Performance

Chapter 5

The Revenue Reality

Chapter 6

Honoring the Letter and Spirit of Federal Student Aid

Chapter 7

The Disabilities Dilemma

Chapter 8

The Access Effect

Chapter 9

Creating a New Admission Standard

Chapter 10

Providing Meaningful Postsecondary Options

Chapter 11

The Equity/Excellence Enrosque

Chapter 12

The Impact of Global Competition

Chapter 13

Restoring America’s Culture of Learning

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Many people enthusiastically contributed to this book out of no greater motivation than to improve public education in America. We are most grateful to our students and colleagues—past, present, and future—who inspired this book. We especially thank the students who spent time with us outside the classroom and allowed us to share their personal stories. We feel particularly indebted to our dauntless peers in public education—those we know personally and those whose work we admire from afar—many of whom assisted us immeasurably by identifying, collecting, and connecting us to information and sources important to this text. We are humbled and inspired by their courage and scholarly example. Several readers graciously lent their editorial skills to early versions of this text; many thanks to Dustin Lilledahl, Terry Lilledahl, Jim Repp, and Ryan Smith for gifting their valuable time and considerable talents.

To everyone involved at Palgrave Macmillan, you have our genuine appreciation; your collective commitment to this text from beginning to end was so uplifting and encouraging. To Sarah Nathan, you are the best in the business, and we are eternally grateful for your wonderful advice and ceaseless advocacy for this book. Much appreciation, as well, to Mara Berkoff and Devon Wolfkiel, two invaluable Palgrave Macmillan team members who contributed a great deal during the publishing process.

Finally, to our husbands, Terry Scherer and Matt Anson, we owe so much for your unwavering support of this publication, from start to finish and in the many years leading up. Your priceless gifts of love, patience, and time made writing this text possible and enjoyable. To our parents and siblings and other family members, teachers, coaches, mentors, and friends who have invested so much in us over the years: thank you for helping us develop our minds and our hearts for the ultimate purpose of serving others.

Introduction

Stephanie’s first official function as a newly admitted community college student was a full-day orientation session that included presentations by the college president, each of the numerous student support organizations on campus, a group scavenger hunt that acquainted her with a dozen of her new college peers and key campus offices, and a catered lunch in the student commons. The theme running through the morning’s activities was We are here to help you succeed!, and as a recent high school graduate who was not accepted to the state universities she applied to, Stephanie grew more convinced as the day wore on that she had made the right decision to enroll at her local community college.

The afternoon began with a group administration of the Accuplacer test, a College Board–developed assessment of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills used to place students in classes of appropriate rigor in their first college semester. In her post-test meeting with an advisor, Stephanie learned that, based on her Accuplacer scores, she would need to begin with precollege courses in all three areas—what the counselor referred to as developmental classes. To get Stephanie registered as a full-time student and to assist her with adjusting to college life, her advisor was also placing her in the college’s First Year Experience course, designed to help her with test-taking, study habits, and other skills needed to survive her freshman year.

I want to be an elementary teacher, Stephanie told her advisor. Will any of these classes help me with that?

They will all help you with that, the advisor assured her. You will need to improve in these skill areas before you can begin to take the courses that lead to your degree. As part of your first year experience course, you will complete a degree plan that will show you what you need to take each semester to finish.

What the advisor failed to mention to Stephanie is that she had tested into the lowest levels of developmental mathematics, reading, and English. To complete her precollege-level coursework, she will need to successfully pass three semester-long courses in all three areas with Cs or better. Twenty-seven of her first credit hours at the college will not count toward a degree, and Stephanie’s financial aid clock will start the minute she attended her first developmental courses, which puts her, at best, a year-and-a-half away from enrolling in college credit courses. The advisor also did not share with Stephanie that nine out of ten students who test into the college with similar placement scores never make it to their sophomore year of college-level work. Stephanie was admitted to this open enrollment institution, but she was a long way from having been admitted to college.

There are at least two ways to think about the concept of open access to higher education in the United States. One is the more traditional view that is being applied to Stephanie—that anyone with a high school diploma or a General Education Development (GED)¹ credential should be granted admission to any community college or four-year institution with an open admission policy. This definition is often accompanied by a belief that, to be truly accessible, higher education must also be affordable and convenient to students in terms of location and class times. It can strongly be argued that by this definition at least the first two years of higher education in America are approaching full accessibility. The average cost of tuition and fees for America’s community colleges for the 2012–2013 academic year was $3,130,² meaning that a maximum federal Pell Grant of $5550 will cover these expenses, in addition to allowing the purchase of textbooks, and other educational supplies and materials, often with money left over. As a result, if by open access we mean getting students admitted to some postsecondary education with the ability to pay for tuition and books, the United States is approaching a fully accessible higher education system. A study by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research estimated that there were about 1,299,000 college-ready 18-year-olds in 2000, and the actual number of persons entering college for the first time in that year was about 1,341,000. This indicates that there is not a large population of college-ready graduates who are prevented from actually attending college.³

Another view of open access, and the one presented in this book, is that implicit in the extension of access is the promise that there is some reasonable chance for success—that access is to more than just the buildings and the classrooms on campus and includes a likelihood that, once admitted, a student can successfully complete some program of study. This view contends that allowing everyone to access a pathway that leads to great opportunities, but is too difficult for many to traverse, is not really granting access at all, but perpetrating a cruel hoax. This becomes particularly true when those holding open the door know in advance that for many like Stephanie who are being encouraged to enter, there is no other exit but immediately back out onto the street, usually without any counseling about other potentially more meaningful postsecondary options at the institution or in the greater community.

Each year in the United States, 45% of all undergraduates enroll in community colleges.⁴ Of those who begin as first-time freshmen, approximately 60% require remediation in one or more of the core academic skill areas of math, reading, or English before being ready for college-level work.⁵ As a result, a disproportionate percentage of instructional resources and courses offered by these colleges are committed to developmental education, and for many new students little or none of their coursework applies toward a degree. For students who are required to first complete these developmental courses, access is not to college, but to the possibility of college if they can successfully navigate their developmental experience.

As the national movement toward greater institutional accountability encourages more colleges to develop student tracking databases that measure student success, it becomes glaringly apparent that a significant number of these students will not succeed, and that for those who test into the lowest levels of remediation, colleges are being asked to do the improbable, and often the impossible, in moving them successfully to a college credential. The colleges know it, the faculty know it, and state systems that collect and analyze these data show it. The only players in this open access game unaware of the high probability that the students will never complete a two- or four-year degree are the students themselves (and sometimes their parents or guardians).

There seems to be something crass and inhumane about talking about students’ success purely in terms of probability, and every community college administrator can relate anecdotal accounts of students who entered at the lowest levels of developmental studies and eventually completed a degree or certificate program. Most cannot tell you, however, what happened to the remaining 90% who were unable to complete a college mathematics course within three years of enrollment, but spent thousands of dollars—of taxpayer money and usually some of their own—reaffirming failure that the college could anticipate from initial enrollment. Was it fair and just to afford to each of those students the opportunity to fail when it was known in advance that nine out of ten of them would not succeed? Even in an environment of unlimited resources, and of limitless time to be committed to personal development, probably not. But particularly when colleges, states, and the nation face fiscal decisions of survival proportion, when student debt is burdening even the most successful graduates—let alone those who fail to complete a program that promises employment—and when global economic pressures demand that as a nation we channel every available dollar into improving postsecondary completion, we do not have that luxury. Perhaps paradoxical to some, improving America’s postsecondary completion rate depends in part on making higher education more exclusive by enforcing existing Federal Student Aid (FSA) regulations and by requiring students to meet a performance standard before entering the FSA-eligible curriculum. Inherent in setting a performance standard on the FSA-eligible curriculum is providing access to meaningful postsecondary education alternatives for those who do not initially qualify.

There are implications in the assertion that access to the FSA-eligible curriculum should be rationed which should make even the most unapologetic elitist uncomfortable. The statistics safeguarded by these colleges and universities demonstrate that those most likely to fall into the underprepared student category are our historically underserved ethnic minority population. Yet this is the student population in which virtually all of college enrollment growth is now occurring, and if we fail to educate these students, we fail our nation’s future. Without question, however, the remedy for low postsecondary completion is not to maintain open access to the FSA-eligible curriculum, continue enrolling every interested student, and hope for improved completion, nor is it to accelerate seriously unprepared students into college-level work while threatening to withhold community college funding unless completion rates continually improve.

The complete absence of any admissions standard to a nationwide network of open-door institutes of higher education, coupled with easy access to FSA, is driving mass underperformance in the K-12 system. Under our current system, there are ample incentives for K-12 students to relax, because the word in the hallways is, It really doesn’t matter how you do; you can always get into the community college and get it paid for. So, in addition to open-door policy presently allowing students to enroll in community colleges, who are unlikely to become college-ready in a reasonable period of time, much less persist to any certificate or degree, this policy counterproductively discourages capable students from applying themselves at the secondary level, which greatly explains why 60% of community college students test into developmental education. Open admissions policy lowers the perceived value of higher education and misdirects impressionable K-12 students from the undisputed truth that quality of academic preparation directly relates to academic success upon enrollment in college. Open enrollment policy bears significant responsibility for the very large and chronic gaps observed between American students’ real academic potential and their actual development.

In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini recounts a story about a friend who owned a jewelry store and, no matter her efforts, Cialdini’s friend struggled to sell her very reasonably-priced turquoise jewelry on display. One day, on her way out of town on business, she hastily scratched out a note for her employees that was intended to read Everything in this display case x ½.⁶ When the jewelry store owner returned from her buying trip, she was shocked to discover that all the turquoise had sold. The purchases were not driven by a markdown, however. She learned that an employee had misread her rushed handwriting and believed the note to say x2—or double!—the price of everything in the case. Simply put, when her customers perceived the value of the jewelry to be great—worth something—they experienced an increased desire to own it.

Similarly, while the open access policy historically associated with community colleges provided, at important times in our nation’s history, critically important enrollment flexibility, for a variety of reasons we must question whether the effects of that policy now undermine the positive effects on student success originally intended and accomplished. We must also be bold enough to investigate whether the reasons for originally applying open access policy still exist, or if community colleges continue to observe the policy for other reasons, even as it contributes to lowered student success.

Drawing the parallel between community college open access and raising the price of the turquoise jewelry should not be interpreted to mean that tuition and fees should be increased as a way to increase college-bound students’ perceived value and commitment to their educational experience. Though that would be one way to effectively increase the perceived value and attendant commitment for some students, it would also introduce an undue financial barrier to higher education for the most low-income students in the nation. Rather, for reasons that will be detailed throughout this book, the time has come to observe existing FSA regulations and for community colleges to apply a modest admission requirement to the FSA-eligible curriculum. Both are long overdue acts of stewardship.

This book exposes the fallacy in our national open access thinking and details how tightening admission requirements to the FSA-eligible curriculum at community colleges will inevitably strengthen achievement at all levels and among all segments of our population, while leading to the creation of an array of more meaningful higher educational experiences. It argues that by proactively creating alternative postsecondary education paths—and advising seriously underprepared students into these other options—we not only better serve all currently enrolling students’ long-term interests, but also enable colleges and universities to better serve those whose preparation and abilities position them for likely success at the college level. This is a book about helping colleges and students identify the paths for success that best suit their preparation, abilities, and life circumstances so that public education resources earn the greatest social and economic returns for students, colleges, communities, and America.

We addressed some of the core issues in this book in a presentation, The Imperative for Improving America’s Culture of Learning: What’s Missing in the Redesign Conversation, at the National Association for Developmental Education conference in 2013. Many colleagues approached us afterward and in the days that followed and voiced the general sentiment one commenter included on an evaluation form: We need a whole lot of this being presented nationwide.⁷ We hope, after reading our book, you agree and engage your relatives, neighbors, colleagues, and policymakers in serious conversation about the issues raised in this book. Additionally, we hope you feel compelled to act in every capacity you hold power—as a parent, as a grandparent, as a taxpayer, as an educator, as a policymaker—to improve public education in your corner of the world.

Prior to governing the state of Oregon from 1967 to 1975, Tom McCall was a Portland television journalist. McCall’s celebrated 1962 documentary, Pollution in Paradise, detailed the effects of industrial pollution on state water and air quality. As a result, concerns over quality of life and environmental responsibility entered conversations that previously had centered entirely on economic development. While McCall received public plaudits for vastly improving quality of life for Oregon citizens by addressing environmental concerns, he flatly rejected the notions that he alone accomplished change and that engaging as a citizen for the benefit of his community made him particularly exceptional, saying in an interview once, Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it is my responsibility to make it better.⁸

Like Tom McCall, the authors of this book are dedicated public servants. And like Tom McCall, we wish to call public attention to a confluence of environmental issues that—ignored too long—have eroded quality of life in America. And, like Tom McCall, we believe the real heroes are those members in every community across America who will engage in thoughtful discussion about the critical issues raised herein, and take informed action to greatly improve the attitudinal and policy environments that impact public education so that not just Americans may enjoy better quality of life, but citizens around the globe, as well.

Chapter 1

Open Access in Higher Education

When the inaugural president of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, first met with his faculty in 1892, he presented an idea that exemplified why the new president was thought of not only as an academic prodigy, but also a visionary. The university, resurrected from recent bankruptcy through generous gifts from Harper’s friend John D. Rockefeller and a collection of distinguished Chicago philanthropists, was designed in its new incarnation to be a Harvard or Yale of the Midwest, with the most accomplished faculty that money could buy and a mission focused on scholarship and research.¹ During his rise to the presidency, Harper declared that he had . . . a plan which is at the same time unique and comprehensive, which I am persuaded will revolutionize university study in this country.² In his faculty address, Harper pronounced it an unwise commitment of university resources for these handpicked professors to spend time on the general, lower-division education of freshmen and sophomore students. Instead, this general education should be relegated to a collection of junior-level colleges—something akin to thirteenth and fourteenth years of high school, where all high school graduates could enroll in college-level courses in a broad array of general, but essential, fields of study. When this general education was completed, the student could apply then to the university for more education in specific disciplines, leading to a scholarly and research-focused bachelor’s degree.

Some who listened to Harper’s junior college concept praised the idea, seeing value in having talented faculty who taught and worked only with upper-division and graduate students. Others saw in the recommendation a dangerous precedent—the suggestion that anyone with a high school diploma could continue on to the first two years of college without more stringent admission requirements.³ While Harper never succeeded in moving the first two years of the baccalaureate off campus, another friend and colleague, the superintendent of the area’s Joliet Township High School, applied Harper’s ideas to the creation of an experimental postgraduate high school program. Under the administrative leadership of Superintendent J. Stanley Brown, Joliet Junior College was established in 1901 and enrolled its first six students. Within a year, this postgraduate high school program received formal approval from the district’s school board, and open access to postsecondary education for high school graduates was born.⁴

Not until the 1940s, though, as thousands of soldiers returned from the World War II to the benefits promised by the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, did open access to higher education reach full stride. The GI Bill, signed into law that year by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, provided federal government aid to returning soldiers for readjustment to civilian life and was in effect the largest scholarship program in the Nation’s history.⁵ While these federal funds also assisted veterans with hospital bills and provided capital for home and business investments, the most meaningful long-term benefit associated with the G.I. Bill was financial support for postsecondary education opportunities.

The American community college has not always functioned as the open access institution it effectively does today; entry to the first, Joliet Junior College, for example, was firmly reserved for high school graduates. In 1922, at the second meeting of the American Association of Junior Colleges (now the American Association for Community Colleges, or AACC), the junior college was described by the AAJC as "an institution offering two years of instruction of strictly collegiate grade"⁶ [emphasis added]. Altering its junior college definition two years later in 1925, to include a wider curriculum scope in the community college, the AACC specifically impressed that "It is understood that in this case, also, the work offered shall be on a level appropriate for high-school graduates"⁷ [emphasis added].

As World War II came to a close, President Harry S. Truman convened a special Commission on Higher Education to address the unique educational needs of these returning soldiers, many of whom had postponed their secondary education to go to war. Between 1939 and 1945, approximately 500,000 fewer high school diplomas were issued than in the previous six years. In its 1947 report, Truman’s Commission on Higher Education called for the creation of a national network of community-responsive colleges, with entirely open enrollment policies, to more easily accommodate the vast number of soldiers without recent formal education records and/or high school diplomas. By some estimates, approximately 25% of the veterans who attended college directly after World War II would not have enrolled if not for the benefits provided by the G.I. Bill, and they chose to attend in unprecedented numbers. Nearly one million World War II veterans represented half of the men who graduated from college from 1940 to 1955.⁸ These young veterans were returning to a changed America, often without a completed secondary education or adequate postsecondary job training, and with the added challenge of competing against hundreds of thousands of fellow soldiers in a society where more jobs than ever before required some formal job training.

The Commission’s report also acknowledged that the abundant manufacturing jobs that built America during the Industrial Age, roughly between 1860 and 1920, had gradually declined in number as major railroads were completed, large cities constructed, and as mechanization replaced thousands of manual workers. Of the eligible secondary student population in 1924, only 30% graduated from high school, a rate that by 1960 had risen to 75%.⁹ And whereas in 1910 just 5% of eighteen-year-olds enrolled in college, that rate had increased nine-fold by 1960. In the fall of 1939, nearly 1.5 million students were enrolled in college; by 1959, that number had more than doubled to 3.6 million.¹⁰ By observing the growth in America’s higher education enrollment between 1940 and 1960, the country can be seen taking its first significant steps toward a knowledge-based economy in post-industrial America.

During the decade of the 1960s, a new community college emerged somewhere in the United States at a rate averaging nearly one per week, leading one historian of the movement to anoint the community college as the new land-grant institution; the people’s college in the truest sense.¹¹ Simply put, the community college movement was the most remarkable development in education in America—perhaps the world—during the twentieth century, and was driven by the nation’s need to make a college education accessible to every qualified American.¹² President Truman’s brand of open access extended into the next decade as America struggled to accommodate the influx of college-age Baby Boomers, though not all community colleges were founded in the 1960s with open door policy, as much as historians and enthusiasts like to recall. Even institutions founded with admissions standards, though, eventually began practicing open enrollment as the nation’s community colleges grew throughout the 1960s to enroll previously underrepresented populations in response to the equality-driven demands of the civil rights movement.

Community college chroniclers McCabe and Day described this pursuit of educational equity in America, coupled with other efforts to extend social equality to previously marginalized groups, as the access revolution,¹³ and Lavin and Hyllegard proclaimed open admissions to be:

The most ambitious effort to promote educational opportunity ever attempted in American higher education. . . . One of the last great examples of the 1960s commitment to the idea that social policy could and should be used to advance equity in U.S. society.¹⁴

Federal legislation, driven by evolving social and educational philosophy, encouraged higher college attendance by racial and ethnic minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and those without the financial means to self-fund. Specifically, through Title VI of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, postsecondary education was transformed from being an opportunity reserved most commonly for America’s affluent whites, to one extended to students without regard to race, gender, religious orientation, or disability.¹⁵ Arguably, no institution in higher education has so consistently, efficiently, and appropriately responded to society’s changing needs as the community college.¹⁶

Response to the Unprepared

The burgeoning growth of the college-going population, though, was not without its critics. As enrollment increased, many four-year colleges and universities inundated with low-skilled applicants responded by instituting stricter admissions criteria. As a way to assess ability and potential among those applying, standardized tests were employed more routinely, such as the SAT and the ACT, the latter of which became available in 1959.¹⁷ Students unable to qualify for enrollment at more selective institutions flooded the nation’s open access community colleges. Between 1965 and the turn of the century, community college enrollment grew by 500% while only doubling in the four-year public sector of higher education.¹⁸

As early as the 1970s, scholars began to debate the merits of open admission as unprepared students allowed to enroll in college-level courses experienced unconscionable rates of failure.¹⁹ In 1973, Palinchak observed that community colleges in particular were beginning to struggle with a new set of philosophical dichotomies—quality v. quantity; pedantic v. realistic; elite v. mass; idealism v. pragmatism; standards v. democracy; privilege v. right.²⁰ In his vanguard text, Evolution of the Community College, Palinchak was one of the first to criticize the appropriateness of open door policy as the community college student body showed ever-widening disparities in preparation and abilities, noting:

A distinct problem arises over the interpretation of what is euphemistically called the open door policy. . . . When a two-year institution admits anyone and everyone, as a true open door would, it is often done with a sincere attitude of extending democracy and bringing more rights to our citizens. At this point, however, many institutions discover that they are unprepared or unable to provide adequate programs for students who are unconventional by all traditional criteria.²¹

Open door policy, responsible for allowing some students to enroll in college-level courses they were not prepared for, eventually became pejoratively termed revolving door policy,²² which is still the unfortunate experience for a large number of students who enter community colleges, enroll beyond their abilities, fail, and leave. Many community colleges that had previously employed wide open access to their college-level courses responded by toeing the door slightly shut in the 1980s and 1990s by way of instituting mandatory assessment policies for the purpose of evaluating entering students’ college readiness and more effectively advising them into appropriate courses.²³ Developmental education course design and enrollment exploded during these decades. Right to fail philosophy at the nation’s community colleges had officially yielded to right to succeed as concerned community college faculty and administrators sought to limit the casualties of what Richard Fonte termed laissez-faire open access.²⁴

Mitchell’s 1989 description of his community college’s conversion from a laissez-faire open door policy to one with mandatory assessment and placement components draws back the curtain on prevailing thought at the time—that any college not employing mandatory assessment and placement with an open door policy was acting fraudulently:

If our standards were high, our attrition rates were also extremely high, leaving us open to the charge that we were committing the fraud of promising and charging for educational services that we could not deliver because we gave students the right to fail and provided programs that all but insured that they exercised that right.²⁵

. . . Either we could commit the other fraud—allowing students to continue to enroll in virtually any course they wanted while we raised standards so high that many, if not most, had no chance to pass the courses—or we could do the right thing and prepare them for college level work before we allowed them to attempt college level work. We could give them the right to fail or give them the right to succeed.²⁶

That same year, Ed Morante argued that mandatory assessment and placement should not be viewed as a penalty, but rather as an important indicator of a community college’s stewardship.

Essentially proponents of (right to fail) philosophy argue that, as adults, students have the freedom to choose courses even if there is a low probability of succeeding in these courses. This philosophy . . . is based on the concept of freedom and a process of decision-making. . . . In making a good decision—a truly free decision—an entering student needs to know what his/her strengths and weaknesses are as well as interests and goals, the courses available at the college, and the standards and requirements of the institution. Without an appropriate understanding of these factors, decision-making is a guessing game and little true freedom is present.²⁷

And in 1999, Grubb captured the evolution of thought on open door policy, the core of which is still present in the modern student success and postsecondary completion agenda:

The tactic of blissful indifference has emerged in the past in discussions about the right to fail. In the early 1970s . . . a debate ensued about whether the responsibility for success lies with students or with the colleges themselves. . . . Over time the discussion about the right to fail has moderated, replaced by a more sophisticated discussion about what to do about high rates of noncompletion.²⁸

The Completion Agenda

The roots of the modern completion movement can be traced to the early 1980s and the dire predictions that America was not positioning itself to compete well in the global