EDITORIAL: Change English courses?
Most of us have heard of students on campus that are laughingly noted as being "on the five year plan" toward a degree, but exactly how realistic is it to think the average person is able to follow a two-year format in a community college?
Our students have homes, families, and jobs whose needs must be met, and don’t really have the time to successfully complete 18 credit hours a semester.
Twenty-six percent of students who took the English placement test failed and were placed into developmental English courses (see page 1). Developmental English sections require an entire semester that most people find throws off their two year plan even farther.
Developmental English is not transferable and cannot be counted toward any degree. English 090 is three credit hours and 093 is five. The credit hours determine the amount of tuition to be paid by each student and by the state to the college.
A student’s tuition rate is $55 per hour which means that you pay $275 for English 093, a class that doesn’t transfer, and those 26% of students that placed low will pay that much or more before they are allowed to take English 101.
Could developmental English be taken simultaneously with English 101 and benefit the student perhaps even more?
Maybe developmental sections could be broken into specific categories to better meet the diverse needs of this population of students and offered in eight week increments at one credit hour each.
Most students would prefer to take English 101 with a developmental section and get the three transferable credits for a little over $200 than spend two or three semesters at a cost of over $400.