The Four-Year-Myth as Misnomer

Like many institutions, my college is embarking on a ‘guided pathways’ mission; I am fine with that, and will be working on one team involved. One basis, a rationale of sorts, is a report called “the Four Year Myth” from Complete College America (see the ‘field guide’ post earlier today). The ‘myth’ report is available at http://completecollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/4-Year-Myth.pdf

The basic idea of guided pathways is to eliminate two apparent causes of excess credits (and time) — remediation and options in courses. Remediation is blamed for much of the excess credits and time, so we are supposed to mainstream and contextualize; we can (and should) do some work this way, though I am sure that we need to have developmental-level math courses.

Eliminating options is supposed to reduce extra credits taken for a bachelor degree. The idea is that students start the process with a major, and only take courses on that program (path). If the major is not known, the student is assigned to a ‘meta-major’ where they take courses very likely to apply to their final goal.

I see two parts of this mythology that lack validity. First, student goals … the presumption is that students know enough about their goals that they will almost always end up in the correct program or meta-major. This presumption contradicts some very strong occupational data from the past 20 years: today’s occupation or goal is tomorrow’s memory, when we have a new goal or occupation. I see no evidence in our students that they will end up in the correct meta-major or program at a high rate, when starting college.

Second, the ‘four year’ modifier is an external thing. Few people in education call that a ‘four year degree’; we say “bachelor degree”. It’s true that the requirements for a bachelor degree can be completed in 4-years of full-time study if the goal is stable and there are no problems (initially or along the way). Even in ancient times (way back in 1970) these conditions were not universal. Today’s students arrive at the college door with a high probability of problems, many of which are not related to ‘remediation’. There is a higher risk of instability in goals as well as bumps in academic performance along the way.

This last analysis leads me to say that the “four year myth” is a misnomer. A myth needs to be held as true, and this one is not held as true in general. You might notice that claims like this tend to come from certain types of ‘reform agents’ (see that field guide again).

College completion is a fantastic goal, and we in mathematics have a special responsibility in this work. Our students deserve better. However … basing a program on a shaky mythology supported by data cherry-picked to support that position is not the best we can do. We need to do the hard work of identifying all of the major causes for not-on-time completion, categorize and prioritize the ones that can be improved, and develop plans that deal directly with the causes. [Guided pathways is likely to be an improvement, though minor.]

Developmental Mathematics Revival!

Bringing a new vitality to college mathematics 2011 to 2019