College Access Without Support Is Not Opportunity

This was the title of a talk by Syracuse professor Vincent Tinto.He has been studying for many years the lack of college success at broad access colleges. He has completed a large scale study of community colleges and universities to find keys to sucess under the headings: expectations, support, feedback, and involvment. The study focusses on learning communities through student engagement from the classroom up.Study groups linked around first year courses are crucial. Students get together before and after class- eg social and intellectual connections help. Clasess must be linked and not just one at a time for learning communities to be most effective. So he recommendes courses links like develpmental english, a core content course like history and a general studies seminar for a cohort learning community.
Tinto"s papers are on his website -vtinto@syr.edu

Labels: College Success, support for college