The Key to Guided Pathways: You Need to Get Started
Date Posted: October 23, 2019
Posted In: Workforce,
From The Evolllution: Higher education’s promise is being undercut by low completion rates—especially among less-advantaged Americans who could most benefit from a degree. At the same time, students who are able to earn a degree often waste significant time and money. On average, community college graduates earn 22 credit hours more than needed.
Guided pathways have emerged as a promising strategy to increase on-time completion, with broad support from states, foundations and institutions. Research continues to validate the idea that students are more likely to graduate if they have a clear path – or degree map – rather than being asked to choose from among a vast array of courses.
All of this adds up to an urgent need to implement pathways at both breadth (all programs) and depth (all requirements needed to graduate). Yet, most institutions—even those that passionately embrace the potential promise of pathways—are stuck in the planning phase.
A better approach? Just start.
Pathways require institutions to make many difficult decisions—which courses to include in the pathways, costs to harmonize general requirements, how to potentially integrate meta-majors, what best practices to follow regarding undeclared students, and so on. Often, arriving at the best approach requires iteration—some answers just aren’t clear until you start.
Even relatively limited progress can pay dividends. Moving pathways from a static form to one that is fully integrated into advising, student planning and course scheduling is game-changing. Advisors and students gain critical experience integrating pathways into their planning. Also, departments can begin working out modifications to course schedules and other critical changes.
NorthWest Arkansas Community College has seen the benefits of this approach. The college defined “meta majors”—and then dove right in. Implementing, managing and improving pathways on the fly requires a high level of collaboration across the college, but it has allowed the institution to quickly make advances in creating stackable pathways. Many necessary changes—including the full scope of technology integration, changes to course requirements and sequencing in several programs—weren’t evident until the work began.
The iterative process can be challenging, but it has allowed the college to make much faster progress than if it had tried to anticipate every need before moving forward. Both college leaders and on-the-ground staff and faculty have realized that learning as you go is inevitable. Embracing that idea allows institutions to move from theoretical discussions to actual analysis of how students are progressing.