Remedial Education and Completing College: Exploring Differences by Credential and Institutional Level

This study compared the postsecondary outcomes of students who enrolled in remedial (sometimes called "developmental") courses in college and their peers who did not. The analysis examined the relationship between postsecondary remediation and the odds of achieving 3 postsecondary outcomes and explored how these relationships varied between students attending colleges at the 2-year and 4-year levels. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression analyses were performed on interview and transcript data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (2004/2009) for 3,510 students starting at 230 2-year colleges and 6,820 students at 440 4-year colleges. Four-year college students who took any number of remedial courses were significantly less likely to complete a bachelor's degree; for students who started at a 2-year college, taking 3 or more such courses had a negative association with bachelor's degree completion. However, remedial education did not exhibit a statistically significant relationship with remaining enrolled or earning an associate's degree in either population.