Linky, Linky!

• Yesterday on Confessions of a Community College Dean, Dean Dad blogged about boutique student success programs. “They can't scale up,” he says. “They work only so long as their per-student cost is off the charts. And those costs are covered by cutting other things.” Here at Accelerating Achievement, we agree that large-scale problems won’t be solved by small-scale programs. We’re hoping that our running series on the SCALERS model can help colleges think about program value AND feasibility as they scale-up small programs.  

• Over at the Getting Past Go blog, Bruce Vandal is keeping us updated about his visit to New Zealand to meet with postsecondary leaders. “New Zealand, like the United States, has recognized that it must increase the percentage of their residents who pursue and achieve postsecondary credentials,” he tells us. “And, like the U.S., they find that far too many of their residents do not possess the skills they need to succeed at the higher levels of their tertiary education system.”

• Inside Higher Ed brings us the saga of developmental math at California State University at Bakersfield. Because of budget cuts in 2009, CSU Bakersfield moved from classroom-based developmental math to only offering these courses online. Things didn’t work out like they’d hoped. “In one course, the student pass rate plummeted from 74 percent to 45 percent. In the other, the rate fell from 61 percent to 37 percent.” While the beginning of this story has all the makings of a tragic tale of students being left behind in this era of extreme resource constraints, the university has since managed to bring student pass rates to higher levels than before the cuts. You’ll have to read the whole story to find out how.