As higher education leaders continue to grapple with the need to rethink and redesign remedial education, it may pay to look at the experience of 25 minority-serving institutions, or MSIs, that revamped their remedial programs under a three-year initiative that just came to an end.
That’s one of the takeaways of a new policy brief, titled, “Rethinking Remedial Education: The Role of MSIs in Serving Under-Prepared Students in the 21st Century.”
The brief ― issued late last week by the Institute for Higher Education Policy ― describes MSIs as being “well positioned to advance new models for remedial instruction” because of their commitment to serving historically underrepresented groups.
Since in the next decade, MSIs will graduate close to half of students of color ― who are overrepresented in remedial education ― the brief posits that MSIs are “vital” to the nation’s college completion agenda. And so is the way in which they handle remedial education, it says.
“MSIs’ important role includes remedial education as a critical strategy to maintaining access and paving the way to degree completion for populations that have traditionally been underserved,” the brief states.
IHEP issued the brief Friday as the organization’s work with the Lumina Foundation’s MSI-Models of Success program, which began in 2009, came to an end.
The program sought to improve and document increased postsecondary attainment.
