GPS Part III: Guided Pathways to Success … Informed Choices and Equity

In the structures used for Guided Pathways to Success (GPS), colleges are encouraged to provide information to students about selecting a major.  That is great, obviously, until one reads the next detail:

Colleges use a range of information such as past performance in high school to provide recommendations to students about programs of study that match their skills and interests. http://completecollege.org/the-game-changers/

In other words, we would limit information to each student based on our interpretation of their background.  I want every student coming to my institution to consider (even dream) about goals that exceed their history and the accidents of their background.

The push to have students select a program of study is well-intended … we all want students to ‘succeed’.  However, we can not be so short-sighted that we encourage students to only consider goals that seem reasonable based on the data we might happen to have available.  Such methodologies will tend to maintain social class and economic standing; therefore, I see a fundamental conflict between this GPS method and the basic purposes of community colleges … upward mobility.

Statistics does not work for limiting choices at the individual level.  In the medical uses of data, providers can get very close to a valid ‘limiting’ of choice … when the statistical analysis has a small margin of error, due to understanding a physical process well.  Education does not deal with small margins of error (not in this decade, anyway).

The CCA website repeatedly shows ‘data’ with the implication that the results are statistically determined.  For example … community college students average 81 credits for a 60 credit degree, proving that students accumulate ‘too many’ credits.  That only makes sense if you look at the 130% credit count as measuring wasted effort; this has never been determined for a group of students, even though the CCA would like us to believe that it has been.

What’s your thought on what the ‘extra’ 30% represents?  Personally, I look at that 30% as being composed of several parts:

• Excess remediation (should be 10% or less); is likely to account for 15%.
• Intentional program credits (programs requiring 61 to 64 credits are common).
• Intentional student choices (deliberately taking a course at CC … often because it’s cheaper).  This one probably accounts for 10% in that 30%.
• Uncertainty causing choice of courses inappropriate for the student

I do not see the rationale that says this 30% ‘excess’ means that students must make a choice of program of study EARLY and that we should direct them to fields appropriate to their background.  I believe that the CCA does not understand the community college environment, with the factors influencing student choices about courses; this, combined with a bad use of a piece of data, results in a socially unacceptable suggestion (that we track students based on their background).  Following the CCA advice seems to amount to “keeping the wrong people out of the important programs”.

Equity is a fundamental part of our work in community colleges.  Equity and upward mobility are more important than arbitrary metrics of credits earned in community colleges.  State and local policy makers should be very concerned about following the CCA advice to implement GPS with a heavy emphasis on selecting the best program of study right away.

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