Editorial Mistakes Implications of Rising College Graduations

– Daily Independent editor must not know all the facts

We’ve already discussed the recent rise in college degree awards in Kentucky’s public universities here and here.

While this is a good sign for our college system, it doesn’t necessarily follow that our public elementary and secondary system is also doing a lot better.

In fact, other readily available information from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education shows our K to 12 system probably didn’t make much of a contribution to better college degree performance. The figure below, which we have used before, shows the percentage of recent high school graduates who needed remedial courses when they went on to college.


Except for the English remedial area, there has been scant improvement in this data over time.

Still, I suspected some would misinterpret the recent rise in college diplomas, and I wasn’t disappointed. On June 5, 2009, the Daily Independent from Ashland ran an editorial saying, “The increased number of degrees also is a positive indication that students fresh out of high school are arriving on campuses better prepared to do college work.”

Well, the graph above seriously challenges the Independent’s opinion. And, the graph has been around since April. And, the data in the graph from 2002 and 2004 have been around for years. So, someone isn't paying attention.

Anyway, what is more likely happening is that those extensively supplied college remedial courses are having some effect.

I talked to Dr. Ed Hughes, president of the Gateway Community and Technical College in Northern Kentucky, not long ago, and he indicated that if students stay in the remedial (which the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education [CPE] likes to call “developmental”) courses, the students often do better at completing a degree than those kids who enter without an apparent need for remedial courses.

This area needs more research, which, as I mentioned earlier, will hopefully come when the CPE releases more information in this area later this year.