Underprepared or Underserved?

I have been hearing complaints for three generations about how poorly prepared college students are.   

It’s true that some students are not fully prepared for a post-secondary education. For a variety of complex reasons, some students may require extra services and support. They may even require additional coursework. What people fail to realize, however, is that the “underprepared” student is not a new phenomenon in American higher education.

In 1636, Harvard College opened in the American colonies to train clergy for the new commonwealth. Courses were taught in Latin; textbooks were written in Latin and Greek. Some of Harvard’s students benefitted from having been apprenticed to ministers prior to enrolling at the college. Through these apprenticeships, they learned Latin and Greek.   

Not everyone had this advantage, however, and many of those that didn’t were unschooled in Latin and Greek. In other words, they were underprepared for their course of study. The institution responded by providing tutorial services to assist those young men in learning the classical languages.

Fast forward 200-plus years, when Harvard faculty grumbled about how poorly their students wrote. To address the lack of students’ preparation in formal writing, Harvard faculty in 1874 introduced a freshman composition course, a staple in undergraduate education ever since.

The preponderance of preparatory programs in colleges and universities during the 19^th and 20^th centuries serves as evidence that a portion of American students entered higher education lacking the skills needed to compete. In her landmark text Improving Student Learning Skills, Martha Maxwell writes, “By 1915, three hundred fifty colleges in the United States reported to the U.S. commissioner of education that they had college preparatory departments” designed to help students develop the skills and competencies they would need to persist towards a degree.

Students less adequately prepared for post-secondary educations were enrolled in all types of institutions, from the public land-grant universities to private, highly selective ones. Maxwell states that in 1907, more than half the students matriculating at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia did not meet the admissions requirements, and in the 1950s, experts reported that 2/3 of the students entering college lacked the reading and study skills necessary for success.

In the mid-1960s, larger numbers of traditional-aged college learners sought admission to post-secondary institutions than in previous years, and colleges and universities were opening their doors to a more diverse group of learners. These changes, too, resulted in the need for support services for those students who might have been less prepared than some of their peers for academic success.   

We know the pandemic has had a significant impact on student performance. A New York Times report (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html) cites findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing that showed a drop in math and reading scores of the 9-year olds who completed the assessment. Assessment reports from academic departments for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 assessment cycles provide evidence of declining student performance, motivation, and satisfaction.

That said, students referred to as “underprepared” have had a place in colleges and universities from the very start, because, as Maxwell writes, “American higher education has historically had an egalitarian thrust.” An equity-minded approach recognizes that underprepared doesn’t mean unqualified or incapable. An equity-minded approach recognizes that being underprepared is often a consequence of being underserved or, like those Harvard students in the mid-17^th century, not having all the advantages enjoyed by other students. Institutions committed to the principles of democracy, diversity, equity, and inclusion are committed to serving these students without judgment.  

 

Works Cited

Maxwell, Martha. Improving Student Learning Skills. Clearwater, H & H Publishing Company, Inc., 1997.

Mervosh, Sarah. “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading.” New York Times, 1 September 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html. Accessed 27 September 2022.