The Problems Are Legion

Why are so many CSU students failing?

California State University students are failing or withdrawing at high rates from many courses — including chemistry, calculus, English and U.S. history — prompting renewed efforts for systemwide reform.

New attention is being placed on classes that for years have shown failure or withdrawal rates of 20% or more — sometimes reaching as high as half the students. Efforts to overhaul the courses and improve teaching are now seen as a crucial way to help more students pass and graduate.

For example, more than a third of Sacramento State students in some physics, economics, computer science and anthropology classes failed or left those courses. At Fresno State, the same was true in some math, chemistry, criminology and music courses.

When more than 20% of students in a class receive a D, F or withdraw, that course is considered to have a high “DFW rate,” in university parlance. Generally, course rates are averaged over three years. Cal State Los Angeles, for example, reports that about 11% of all of its undergraduate classes have high fail rates. Statistics are close to that for the Fresno and Sacramento campuses.

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Officials said the problem exists across all 23 campuses.

CSU reported 686 high failure courses systemwide last fall with enrollments of at least 100. Campus administrators, however, are looking at smaller classes too, signaling that the problem is likely to be more widespread. Just three campuses, Fresno, Los Angeles and Sacramento reported a total of 453 high failure courses.

Challenging course material, ineffective teaching and unprepared or overwhelmed students contribute to the rise in high failure/withdrawal rates, experts say. Failures in these courses and repeated attempts to pass them can add semesters to students’ time on campus because many of the courses are required for their majors. Worse, failing a class can send students into a tailspin that leads to abandoning majors or dropping out altogether.

Look at the reasons the LA Times gives!  The first two blame the professors, the third blames the students.  What about the universities themselves? 

It's time for our politicians--and I include CSU administrators among them--to admit that they're letting too many unqualified students into our universities.  For example, how long has it been since Sacramento State dropped it's Entry Level Math test for incoming freshman?  What possible reason could there be for dropping the SAT/ACT that to let in students who wouldn't otherwise have met the cutoff?  Campuses swarm with students who are there because they're told that going to college is the way to get ahead in the world--and they're not given any alternatives.  A few years later they've dropped out and wonder how they're going to pay the student loans they've racked up.

"Challenging course material"?  Isn't that kind of the idea behind college?  And I have no doubt that there is some "ineffective teaching" occurring, but can that truly be the reason so many students are failing so many classes?  And if that truly is a major issue, why doesn't CSU address it?

I'm inclined to believe that the lion's share of the problem rests with the students themselves--and we in K-12 aren't free of blame here.  Some of us resist the pressure to water down our courses, to pass students who shouldn't pass, to "round up" grades so students look like they've performed better than they did--but too many teachers don't resist that pressure.  Even I am forced to admit, however, that the river must have smoothed my rock over time, as the pre-calculus course I teach now does not have the rigor that the pre-calculus course I taught in 2003-2004 had.  Part of the reason for that is a change in standards, but I'm sure a non-zero proportion of the change is just that I've been worn down.

But I wasn't worn down because I wanted to be.  No, students and parents want easier classes.  They want easier classes and higher grades.  I wrote about this earlier this month.  

And the LA Times writes a hand-wringing article about what's to be done.