This Week in Student Success

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This is the first installment of what I plan to make a weekly feature: a roundup of notable news on student success. Since it’s the inaugural edition, I’ve taken a somewhat generous view of what counts as “this week.” So—what’s happening in the world of student success?

Shorter courses for success

Starting in 2018, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College redesigned all of its courses to run in eight-week terms instead of the traditional sixteen. The goal? To improve student success.

Instead of taking four courses over sixteen weeks, students now take two over eight weeks, followed by a short break, and then another two courses.

The shift to shorter terms is something we’ve seen at some four-year institutions in the online space, but it’s far less common on campus—and almost unheard of across the board. Still, the model is slowly gaining momentum at community colleges and two-year schools. For example, Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin adopted seven-week terms in 2024, and Odessa College in Texas made the move back in 2014.

And the results suggest it’s working.

Among the advantages cited by schools that have adopted shorter class lengths are the following:

• Reduced disruption from life events. With shorter terms, there’s less chance that life interruptions—like a sick child or car trouble—will derail progress. And if students do have to stop out, they lose far less than they would with longer terms.

• Easier re-entry. Students report it’s easier to return to their studies after stopping out.

• Greater scheduling flexibility. Shorter courses create more options, making it easier for students to fit required classes into their semester schedules—especially important for those working part- or full-time.

• Enhanced community. Some instructors note, paradoxically, that students develop a stronger sense of community in the shorter classes.

Of course, compressed schedules can be intense, and careful course redesign is critical. A common pitfall is attempting to cram sixteen weeks of content into just seven or eight, without rethinking delivery strategies.

I do wonder about two additional issues, though.

The classic objection to shorter terms is that students need sustained exposure to ideas over time in order to learn deeply. I’d be fascinated to see data (which none of the articles I read provided) on what instructional strategies were used, if any, to mitigate this “cramming effect.”

I also wonder how much of the improved outcomes at NWTC stemmed not just from the shorter terms, but from the redesign process itself. In my experience, the simple act of stepping back to rethink and redesign a course—whether moving it online or into an LMS—often leads to improvements. How much of NWTC’s success, then, is attributable to the new structure versus the redesign effort behind it?

Part-time love

The research organization MDRC recently published a post on the supports needed for part-time students. The piece draws on an earlier MDRC study that included interviews with administrators and students at seven institutions, as well as a review of the literature on part-time students in community colleges.

It’s a critical area of study—and one that is likely to become even more important in the years ahead.

MDRC identified a range of challenges that make it difficult to pin down who qualifies as a part-time student and how best to design supports. Many students move back and forth between part-time and full-time status, and they often juggle multiple demands on their time, such as care-giving responsibilities and work.

To address these complexities, MDRC recommends seven best practices for institutions to follow in providing supports for part-time students.

These recommendations are a good starting point, and I especially appreciate the emphasis on a broad range of supports rather than the usual narrow focus on academic advising. Still, even setting aside how general much of the advice is, I find myself frustrated by several issues.

First, the report centers on four student success projects at community colleges, summarized below.

These kinds of comprehensive, coordinated initiatives are valuable, but, as I’ve written elsewhere , they are neither scalable nor sustainable without grant funding (a limitation MDRC itself acknowledges).

The real question is: how can institutions support part-time students in a scalable way without relying on external funding? Those are the kinds of solutions we need.

Second, the report mentions, but doesn’t explore in detail, two issues that seem critical to designing supports for part-time students that truly move the needle on student success. It notes that even though these initiatives provided much-needed support.

Additionally, even after being recruited, staff found that for students who were part of the initiatives.

To me, this lack of student interest and engagement points to a deeper issue, one that won’t be resolved by the promising practices highlighted in the report. There could be many explanations for student behavior: a mismatch between what students perceived as relevant and what was offered, the simple reality of being overwhelmed by competing demands on their time, or some other obstacle we don’t yet fully understand.

This is a critical issue, and unless it’s addressed, real progress in supporting part-time students will remain out of reach.

It’s all greek to me

A new Gallup poll shows that younger Americans—specifically those aged 18 to 24—place far less importance on math skills in both their work and personal lives.

My pet theory is that this reflects how math is taught. For 18- to 24-year-olds, the horrors of math instruction are still fresh, while those of us in the “olds” category have mostly forgotten them (well… almost).

There’s a wonderful essay on the problems of math education that illustrates the issue by imagining what it would look like if music were taught the same way we teach math. Emphasis added.

The way math is taught is often as disjointed and disconnected from practical use as the imaginary music instruction described above. It’s hardly surprising, then, that students struggle with math, dislike it, and find it anything but relevant to their lives.

And honestly, if we just called it maths like the rest of the world, that would be a start.

Musical coda

I am unabashedly stealing this ending from Paul Krugman - but his are great, too, and you should check them out.

I will only be sharing music in this one weekly post. This week it has to be the Alabama Shakes who I got to see live for the first time this past Friday night. They did not disappoint.

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