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2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDate: 2009-08-06
Contact: Kim Wall
Public Relations Program Coordinator
Marketing and Community Relations Office
University of New Hampshire, Manchester
(603) 641-4306
kim.wall@unh.edu
The College Readiness Issue
Manchester, NH – Most high school students today say that they wish to get a college education, and most of them actually enroll. Despite the fact that more students start college than ever before, the number actually earning a degree has not increased in decades. A recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities reveals that two-thirds of the country’s employers say that those who do graduate do not possess vital skills necessary to succeed in today’s global economy. What’s the problem?
One significant source of the problem, says Dr. Gail Fensom, director of UNH Manchester’s first year writing program, is that many students are not ready for the rigors of college study. “High schools were never designed to prepare students for college,” she says. High school requirements, for the most part, have not been correlated with the skill set college professors expect of entering first year students, she says. In fact, high schools and colleges traditionally have not communicated with one another about the mathematical, reading, writing, thinking and study skills that college teachers assume their students enter with.
A indicator of this “gap” between public schools and colleges, says Fensom, is the literacy and mathematics tests many colleges and universities require of entering first year students, assessments that are designed to reveal whether students are ready for the first level of mathematics and writing courses. Nationally, says Fensom, over 40% of entering community college students are not able to reach the benchmarks on the assessments that indicate they are ready for basic mathematics and writing courses. Although the Durham campus does not offer these assessments, UNH Manchester (and a growing number of other universities) does, she says, and the number of entering students who earn assessment scores that indicate they are not ready for 400-level mathematics courses or English 401 are close to national figures.
Luckily, says Fensom, UNH Manchester has several “developmental” courses students can take to ready themselves for the first year English and mathematics courses. Remediation, says Fensom, should not be counted on as a solution. Instead, she has begun an outreach program with area high schools so that high school and college faculty can talk about the reading, writing, thinking and researching skills that UNH Manchester’s faculty expect entering students to have. Dr. Margaret Pobywajlo, director of the Center for Academic Enrichment, helped design a tutoring program at Manchester West High School, and Fensom has spoken with faculty on a number of issues. She has visited Milford High School, Nashua North and Nashua South, and shared with faculty the expectations of English 401. As well, she has offered a number of workshops for high school faculty so that they can better address the college readiness issue.
In May, Fensom presented a session at the annual conference of the New Hampshire Teachers of English, and she has attended several conferences regionally and nationally on the college readiness issue. In August, she will be part of a panel of area college administrators to talk about the issue. Still in the planning stages, UNH Manchester plans to offer a summer workshop in 2010 for high school faculty to strategize ways in which students can be better prepared for the literacy demands of the college classroom.
“In my generation,” says Fensom, “only those who learned well in a classroom setting typically went on to college. Today, everyone is told to get an education, which means that many different types of learners are in our college classrooms. We owe it to those students to begin thinking about how to help them succeed.”
UNH Manchester, UNH's urban campus, offers liberal arts and applied majors in business, science, and technology, all with an urban focus. UNH Manchester is UNH. Learn more at www.unhm.unh.edu.
