College of Education and Human Development - University of Minnesota

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U of M Strategic Planning and Developmental Education Research: Perspectives From the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy about the Proposal to Close the General College

by Dana Lundell, CRDEUL Director; Carl Chung, GC Assistant Professor and CRDEUL Advisory Board Member; Jeanne Higbee, GC Professor and CRDEUL Senior Advisor for Research

On March 30, the University of Minnesota released two Strategic Positioning Task Force Reports that recommend sweeping changes for the Twin Cities campus ( http://www.U of M.edu/systemwide/strategic_positioning/ ) . Among the proposed changes is the dissolution of the General College (GC). The recommendation is to create an expanded College of Education and Human Development, which would house current College of Education departments along with remnants of General College and the College of Human Ecology , which would also be dissolved.

Instead of an independent academic unit, GC would become the Department of General Developmental Education. GC would no longer admit its own students after the fall of 2005 class; after a two-year transition period to serve these and current GC students, the remaining faculty would teach stand-alone developmental education courses to students from around the University. The nationally recognized student services staff would be dispersed, part of a more centralized advising and student support program. The publicly funded U of M will become more nationally selective in its student admissions and privatized in its revenue sources.

For anyone who cares about the future of the University of Minnesota and the future of fair access to higher education in our state, it is important that we assess the recommendations and likely impact of the U of M's plan to close General College . Will the proposed changes address one of Minnesota 's and the nation's greatest challenges-eliminating the achievement gap for future students who will be entering our nation's colleges and universities?

Demographic trends show an increase in college attendance by students of color, low-income, and first-generation college students, as well as by students who are underprepared for higher education due to having fewer preparation opportunities prior to college entry. The need for postsecondary developmental education and access, along with strengthening K-12 education, is not a "relic" of the past but is a strong foundation and framework for the future. These questions are the foundation of General College 's historic work and mission and are the central focus of CRDEUL at the U of M.

In the Strategic Positioning Plan, General College is praised for its valuable contributions to student-centered developmental education. It is stated that this expertise will be retained and strengthened. However, the means for enhancing this research and teaching expertise do not appear to coincide with these goals. We challenge the following assumptions that, according to current research in higher education, are flawed or unsupported in the Strategic Positioning Plan.

U of M Proposal 1 : General College's mission, curricula, and services will be more effective at the U of M expressed as a "unit" on campus providing developmental education services and courses to the university's underprepared students in areas like math, ESL, and writing.

OUR RESPONSE : This proposed reconfiguration of GC will be less effective as a curricular structure for preparing students and honing their skills for other courses at the U of M. Why?

Research in developmental education demonstrates that it is more effective to provide integrated models for supporting students, such as Supplemental Instruction programs or course-based models for working on skill development within all academic disciplines. Writing, mathematics, and communication skills are misconstrued by the current U of M's proposal to be separate entities and the only areas of knowledge that students must develop to become successful academically. Although these are obviously important and essential to a student's success, to offer skills development courses separately from students' academic areas of study and apart from their peer communities is to regress to an older model of "remedial" education here on campus that reflects the outdated models of the 1970s.

A university looking toward the future should base its decisions on newer concepts and strive for what is presently known to be most effective regarding student preparation. Current research studies on learning communities in higher education also confirm that students learn best when a group identity can be formed and educational experiences can be shared. For example, GC is presently implementing and gathering data from its application of the learning communities concept. To propose that future University students who are identified as "lacking" in some skill area should be taking separate classes in a Department of Developmental Education does not reflect what is known about best practices for student learning in the 21 st century. Thus, closing down the presently established learning communities of GC, eliminating all its students, and replacing the concept of preparation with outdated models of remedial education for future students of the U of M will not likely bring about the positive and progressive influence that is present in the current, research-based concepts and curricula that serve students presently in GC.

U of M Proposal 2 : After the proposed elimination of GC, its faculty can continue to do their valuable, world-class research on developmental education and access issues in the proposed new structure under the College of Education and Human Development.

OUR RESPONSE : Educational research requires a synergy and close relationship between its investigators, its driving questions, and its subjects. If GC students are no longer admitted to the U of M campus, how can a group of researchers continue to ask similar questions and get reliable answers- without their primary subjects and multidisciplinary classrooms available to them any longer? How are the experts in GC supposed to effectively continue to produce their strong, productive threads of nationally recognized research in a vacuum? It is an inherent contradiction to retain isolated parts of an effective research college while dismissing the entire community and research base. The research in GC that is nationally recognized is very closely linked to its students, its mission, and its location within a land-grant public university.

U of M Proposal 3 : Access and diversity will be maintained at the U of M despite the elimination of General College . Students from all backgrounds will continue to be admitted and graduate from the institution (with higher retention rates) because services will still be available to support and prepare them for other courses on campus.

OUR RESPONSE : If Minnesotans want the demographics of their state's own rural and urban students to continue to be reflected in proportion to current and future students at their public, land-grant university, then GC is presently the only college on campus with a nearly 75-year legacy of serving this racially, ethnically, socioeconomically, and culturally diverse group of students and preparing them for the rigors of the U of M curriculum. GC admits a more diverse range of students than any other program at the U of M, such as students of color, first-generation college students, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. It also admits the largest percentage of its students from Minnesota and its urban center, the Twin Cities.

Current census data for the U.S. and Minnesota reflects trends for an increasingly diverse and less prepared group of entering college students. Certainly the U of M can claim it will recruit diverse students, though it has not described how it will achieve this goal or appropriately serve all its students with a multicultural education. Will it follow the UC-Berkeley model for becoming more selective in admissions, whose chancellor recently publicly admitted that multicultural relations and lack of diversity on campus were its most pressing problems? Given this and given GC's legacy of commitment to research and teaching for diverse students, is now really the best time to dismantle and dilute the work of a program like this without an adequate replacement? A forward-thinking, world-class university should not turn its back on cutting-edge questions; it should instead try to explore, consult with, and expand education and research programs that will work on solving these challenges for years to come.

For those of us affiliated with GC and especially the Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy (CRDEUL), it is painfully clear that these recommendations are not grounded in an adequate understanding of General College , developmental education, or current trends in higher education research. The proposal will eliminate a successful developmental education college, hinder its ability to do innovative research and teaching, and, in the long run, erect more barriers to higher education for Minnesota 's underserved and talented students. We advocate for more dialogue, research-based decisions, and a more creative strategic planning phase that involves experts in the process and does not eliminate historic opportunities for future generations of students at the land-grant University of Minnesota .