Chronicle article less_choice_more_structure

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July 30, 2012
Less Choice, More Structure for Students: In a
Tennessee System, It Works
By Jennifer González
Nashville
Motivational framed posters line the hallways here at the Tennessee
Technology Center. "The world needs dreamers and the world needs
doers," one reads. "But above all, the world needs dreamers who
do." In classrooms hang inspirational poems with titles like
"Success" and "Don't Quit."

That hopefulness permeates the center, from its staff to its roughly
900 students, with measurable results.

The Nashville campus is part of the Tennessee Technology Center
system, which has become something of a darling among college-
completion advocates. Comprising 27 locations across the state, the
system boasts graduation and job-placement rates that many
colleges only dream of: 75 percent and 83 percent, respectively.
Such achievements are even more noteworthy given the population
the system serves: racially and ethnically diverse, low-income
adults—students who tend to struggle in college.

The system's success has caught the attention of two-year colleges, a
sector in which less than a third of students earn degrees in four
years, although about a fifth of them transfer to four-year colleges
during that time. Administrators from community colleges around
the country—the City Colleges of Chicago; the Ivy Tech Community
College system, in Indiana; and the Texas State Technical College
system, for example—are trekking to Tennessee to observe the
centers' rigid academic structure.

Nobody thinks community colleges should turn into technical
colleges. They have a broader mission, which includes preparing
students for transfer and providing enrichment classes to the
community. Still, the Tennessee system's model seems to help meet
two pressing needs: to increase graduation rates, in accordance with
national goals, and to better prepare students for the work force, as
jobs demand more education than ever before.

http://chronicle.com/article/Less-Choice-More-Structure/133193/?key=SWJzJAY%2BMHg... 8/6/2012


The system's highly structured academic environment, not unlike
that of a high school, is key to its success, senior administrators say.
Rather than choose individual courses, students enroll—the
majority full time—in programs with predetermined schedules.
Classes meet every day for about six hours and last from several
weeks to more than a year, depending on the program. Attendance
is taken. Remediation is embedded in coursework. Though grouped
together, students move through programs at their own pace.

The structure is foreign to most traditional colleges, where students
design their own schedules.

"We take away a lot of the choices from students," says James King,
the system's vice chancellor. "This is not Burger King. There is no
'Have it your way' here."

Mr. King welcomes all the interest in his system, but he finds its
sudden novelty amusing. "We have been around for 60 years," he
says. "We are smiling a lot these days and taking the compliments as
they come."

Over time, despite administrative changes, the technology centers'
instructional model has remained essentially the same. The system
was once run by the state's Department of Education, but as the
centers evolved into predominantly adult-serving institutions, the
Board of Regents took over.

Lawmakers in the state are paying attention. In 2010 the Tennessee
legislature passed a law intended to improve completion rates at
public higher-education institutions. It requires community colleges
to adopt many of the same strategies the technology centers already
employ, such as block scheduling—in which students are assigned to
multiple classes together—and grouping students in cohorts.

National higher-education advocates, too, are looking on with
interest. Stan Jones, president of the nonprofit group Complete
College America, is an enthusiastic supporter of the technology-
center system. In fact, the group released a report in 2010 to
promote the system's work. "The model illustrates that institutions
can graduate more students," he says.

While an increasing number of community colleges have taken
notice of the technology-center system, some are incorporating only
"bits and pieces" of the model, says Mr. Jones. Some limitations are
clear. For example, many community-college students attend part-
time.

But a piecemeal approach to adapting the technical-system model is
problematic, Mr. Jones says, because the synergy of several



strategies is what makes it work. "Without that," he says,
"institutions are not going to get the results they are looking for."
Learning the Ropes

Anybody with a high-school diploma or GED can train at a
Tennessee Technology Center, in programs as varied as collision
repair and practical nursing. The centers, with open enrollment and
rolling admissions, serve about 30,000 students. The prevailing
philosophy is that they learn by doing, at their own pace, with
lectures kept to a minimum.

Graduation is practically inevitable, says Mark A. Lenz, director of
the Nashville center: "We put them on that path from the
beginning." From the start, he says, they know how long their
program will last, what classes they'll take, and how they'll find
work. Costs range from $1,638 to earn a phlebotomy certificate to
$7,711 for a machine-tool-technology diploma.

A hallmark of the centers is a competency-based curriculum, in
which students must demonstrate their mastery of certain skills.
Business-systems-technology students, for instance, take quizzes
and tests, while welding students perform techniques as instructors
evaluate them. The programs are based not on earning credits but
on fulfilling a required number of course hours.

All instructors come from their respective industries and work
closely with an advisory board, primarily of business leaders, to
ensure that the students' training matches local needs.
Relationships on the boards often lead to job offers for students.

The center goes to great lengths to mimic the workplace setting.
Barbering students, for example, work in a large classroom that
resembles a barbershop, down to the striped pole outside the door.
In the mornings, they gather in an adjacent room for "theory class,"
where Jeffrey Moore, an instructor, lectures for an hour on a range
of topics, such as hair tinting and identifying skin disorders.

The rest of the day is spent on the "floor," as it's called, where
students like Kelnitra Robinson apply what they're learning on
paying customers. As Ms. Robinson, wearing black scrubs, dips her
clippers into a large glass of blue disinfectant, she talks about the
need for proper sanitation in a barbershop—a lesson undoubtedly
repeated over the course of the program.

Ms. Robinson, 25, decided to become a barber to improve her
earning potential after being stuck in what she describes as a string
of dead-end jobs, like scooping ice cream at a Dairy Queen. This is
her second attempt at higher education. In 2005, at her mother's
insistence, she enrolled at Volunteer State Community College, to



study physical therapy. But feeling detached from the courses and
the college experience, she dropped out after a year and a half. This
time around, she says, she feels connected to the material,
supported by instructors and staff, and eager to attend classes.

"What I've found out is that I learn best by doing, by working with
my hands," Ms. Robinson says. "I have big dreams now. I plan to
open my own upscale salon, or even a barbershop."

Although students progress through coursework mainly on their
own, instructors are always nearby. In the business-systems-
technology program, where the classroom features a receptionist's
desk, cubicles, and a coffee stand, students at computers work on
basic accounting and customer-relations management.

There are no lectures, but Deanna Wallace, an instructor, roams
around checking on students' work and helping them with concepts
they don't understand. She will be their instructor for the duration
of the program.

Her role is a challenging one, with students continually arriving and
graduating. And the program offers not only certificates and
diplomas, which vary in training length, but also several tracks for
different specialties. So Ms. Wallace must follow students' progress
individually rather than moving them through coursework as a
group.

Standing behind the faux receptionist's desk, she laughs. "You have
to be real organized to do this job," she says. "The key is making
sure everything is laid out for them from Day 1 until they graduate."
Embedded Remediation

Remedial work at the technology centers is integrated into academic
programs, going by the less stigmatizing name "technology
foundations."

A more traditional model, especially at community colleges, is for
students to complete remedial courses before they can enroll in
their chosen programs. But here at the Nashville center, students
enroll in programs, then go through an assessment: an untimed,
computer-based diagnostic test that evaluates them in six areas,
including applied math, reading, and locating information. On the
basis of the test results, each student gets an individualized learning
plan to help improve any areas of weakness, such as conjugating
verbs or multiplying fractions.

Students work on those plans in a "foundations lab." The amount of
time they spend there varies from a couple of weeks to several
months, depending on how much help they need.



Donna M. Johnson, who is studying to be an aesthetician, spent a
week of mornings in the lab, brushing up on math, especially how to
decipher word problems. "Math was kicking my butt," she says. "I
had been out of school for so long. I really needed the help."

Ms. Johnson, 41, has dyslexia, which compounds her difficulty with
word problems. But the foundations lab's senior instructor, Danny
E. Gardner, helped her understand them, she says, by using familiar
names and cities.

Incorporating the lab into students' schedules is so seamless that
some don't recognize they are taking part in developmental
education, says Mr. King, the vice chancellor. "For the students," he
says, "the foundations lab is just part of their academic program."

At community colleges, students who must go through remedial
courses can get discouraged and drop out. With remediation
embedded, some researchers say, students may be more likely to
maintain motivation and not feel as if they are losing time and
money before progressing with their chosen programs.

"The model," Mr. King says, "really makes a difference with our
completion rates."
Applying the Lessons

Elton E. Stuckly Jr., president of Texas State Technical College at
Waco, says he was amazed when he first read about the Tennessee
system's high graduation rates. "How could they brag about 70-
percent completion rates? It was hard to believe," says Mr. Stuckly,
who is also vice chancellor for instructional services at the Texas
State Technical College system.

The Texas system's graduation rate is only 24 percent. "We need to
figure out a way to graduate more students," he says. So with his
interest piqued, Mr. Stuckly organized a visit to Tennessee. His own
state's plan to introduce performance-based financing of all public
colleges next year further spurred him.

In June, Mr. Stuckly and the vice presidents of instruction at each of
the Texas system's four colleges visited the Nashville center. He
liked the small classes, he says, as well as the concepts of course
hours, block scheduling, and embedded remediation.

Mr. Stuckly is hopeful that he can incorporate some of those
strategies on his campus. In fact, he was so impressed by how
instructors in Nashville juggled students at different levels of
progress that he will send several instructors from his system to
visit.



Money is a constant concern in the Texas system, of course, just as
at colleges everywhere, and any significant change in curriculum or
instruction would certainly require more of it. Also, the college's
large enrollment would complicate the creation of smaller classes.
Still, Mr. Stuckly says, there's "a lot we can learn from Tennessee."

A movement toward a more structured curriculum is taking hold at
community colleges elsewhere, too. Those in the City University of
New York are already proving how well some of the strategies
employed by the Tennessee Technology Centers can work in the two
-year sector.

In 2007, CUNY began the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs
to increase the graduation rates of its community-college students.
Now students in the programs attend classes full time, on a block
schedule. The colleges also provide tutoring, career counseling, and,
in some cases, tuition waivers.

A study released in June by MDRC, a nonprofit research firm for
education and social policy, found that students in those programs
were likelier to persist, as well as to earn more credits from their
first to second semesters, than other students were. In addition, the
share of students who completed developmental coursework
increased by 15 percentage points.

Providing less choice and more structure may be counterintuitive to
higher education's tradition of self-exploration. But the idea is
gaining ground among community-college leaders yearning for a
solution to poor retention and graduation rates.

Too many students, studies show, meander through college without
a plan, either dropping out or drawing out their time to degree. But
here in Tennessee, there's no meandering. Community-college
leaders see promise in a model that keeps students on track to that
all-important goal: graduation.

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michaelbitting 6 days ago

Great for thought and discussion.
Good processes may adapt to a wide variety of learning organizations.



However,raises many questions regarding life long learning, and a "solution" to poor retention and
graduation rates.

Like

wilkenslibrary 6 days ago

When I taught ESL at an intensive English program in CA, our students were in class 20+
hours/week, but my community college students all work and many have families, so a full-time
commitment to their education is impossible. The Tennessee Technology Center's system is
wonderful for those who can afford to be fully invested in their program, but for many students,
that's just not an option.

One sentence in this article caught my attention: "Nobody thinks community colleges should turn
into technical colleges." I disagree. If you listen to the discussion, "workforce education" is not only
at the top of many lists of what community colleges should do--it's the only item on the list. As the
article points out, we also prepare students to matriculate to four-year institutions; it doesn't
mention that we also prepare them to think critically and become thoughtful and engaged citizens.

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College

5 people liked this. Like

Reythia 3 days ago in reply to wilkenslibrary

Agreed. On the other hand, I think it'd be reasonably easy to set it up so that classes were only
offered the morning, afternoon, or evening, rather than all day long. That'd be easier for many
workers to get to, while not losing the "small, structured class" feel of it.

Like

11274135 6 days ago

Well, you can overdo the structure thing, but I think it is also true that too many college freshmen
wander around in a forest of choices without any guidance, direction, or advice. Many students
benefit, at least for a time, from having more guidance and fewer unfettered choices. That doesn't
mean that they need to be shoved along an assembly line to become medical records technicians.It
does means that they need some initial required work on the map of the territory and that their
choices should become broader as they progress. There are many students who have extremely
pragmatic goals driven by the realities of their lives, and they should be able to choose the most
direct path. There are many other students who benefit from wandering around, and they should be
able to do that as well. Why does every educational innovation have to be THE answer?


fortysomethingprof 3 days ago in reply to 11274135

College freshman get plenty of guidance, direction, and advice. The problem is that they don't
follow much of it.


Reythia 3 days ago in reply to fortysomethingprof

Except that a lot of that advice is, "Well, since you don't know what you want to do, why
not take a couple of survey classes?" Which is fine for a semester, but doesn't exactly
help advance a career.

1 person liked this. Like



chattahoochee 6 days ago

I take issue with the last paragraph. The goal at Volunteer State CC is graduation. the goal is not
graduation from TTC. The goal at TCC is to find a job. maybe as a barber.

Like

ychumanities 5 days ago

I'll bet the completion rate would improve at my college as well if we eliminated all of our part-time
students.


Reythia 3 days ago in reply to ychumanities

So you think we should just refuse to teach all people who need to work to support themselves
or have a family to support or care for?

Like

gavin_moodie 5 days ago

In Australian baccalaureate programs retention is generally higher and satisfaction lower with
highly structured programs like engineering, and retention is generally lower and satisfaction
higher with more flexible programs such as liberal arts and sciences.


Type your comment here.

leah_shopkow 3 days ago

This program is clearly run like an apprenticeship program, and there would be some difficulties
applying this approach unchanged to academic programs. But it is a demonstration of authentic
peripheral participation within a community of practice and there are intellectual parallels.


Reythia 3 days ago in reply to leah_shopkow

"there would be some difficulties applying this approach unchanged to academic programs"

Actually, this reminds me very much of my first three years of aerospace engineering classes.
Since my major is small (~50 students per year), we only had one set of classes offered each
year. Except for introductory calc/physics and liberal arts electives, we were basically one
group from freshman to junior year. Even senior year, when we had more technical electives,
we were all together for Senior Design class.

It was a very successful technique. Since we all knew each other, we made friends and were
comfortable working in casual study groups. Frankly, if this grouping technique can work in
subjects as diverse as barber school and aerospace engineering, I think it can work most
everywhere.


sciencegrad 2 days ago in reply to Reythia

This is pretty common, I think, for engineering disciplines. But for humanities fields,
they are not rigid at all, and shouldn't be. A history major, for example, should be



allowed to chose the time period and geographical region that he or she would like to
specialize in, rather than being forced to take the same exact history classes as the
majority of their cohort.

Like

Reythia 2 days ago in reply to sciencegrad

Yes and no. I agree that for, say, the last two years, being able to pick and choose
your classes is helpful. But by that point, most of the students are pretty set on their
degrees -- you won't lose a lot to attrition.

But what about freshman who declare themselves history majors, as they enter
college for the first time? For them, I think it makes a lot of sense to group them
into one bunch (or several smaller bunches) and send them through the
introductory classes together. I think you'd be a lot less likely to lose folks along the
way, that way. Then let them diverge once they've gotten more settled, are more
used to college life, and have made some friends. It wouldn't harm anyone to have
to take a year or two of world history, before specializing in something particular --
most students probably effectively do this anyhow.


langlitcul 3 days ago

Kudos to TN for finding what seems to be an excellent way to educate and employ students who
want tech training! For many years we've seen the loss of good technical training--vocational
schools closed and there seems to have been a cultural stigma against technical colleges and
technical jobs. I've heard repeated laments that there's nobody teaching tech skills/offering this
expertise to students in some communities so those interested don't know how to get ahead in,
much less are encouraged in, an area they have a passion for. Partnering excellent tech teachers,
meeting individual students' job skills and any remedial needs, and supplying the workforce well-
trained workers--great model to help the economy and the country!


johnblee 3 days ago

The cohort pathway can work, with modifications, in the general education transfer programs.
Some community colleges start students in a highly structured first-year program with broader
choices in the second year. Better advising linked with a more structured first year cohort allows
students to develop confidence and build relationships with other students and staff that can
sustain them in the second year.


madamesmartypants 3 days ago

I've checked out their website, and I didn't see any liberal arts programs, only ones that were closely
aligned with established careers (barbering, architecture, early childhood development). There was
no online class schedule as is typical for colleges and universities, so my guess is that these colleges
are not resources for people who want to, say, take a class in Italian in preparation for a trip to
Rome, or for older adults who just want to take a class or two to stay active. All fine if your focus is
on getting people into jobs right out of school, but even community colleges have a broader mission
than just job placement. While certainly useful for some institutions and for some students, this
can't really be a universal model for all ccs.

Like

fairday 2 days ago

This is a great vocational school- something that is needed for those who need training in specific
careers to help them get jobs upon completion of the program. The instructional mode seems to be


Less Choice, More Structure for Students: In a Tennessee System, It Works - Students ... Page 10 of 10

heavily on apprenticeship style where the students learn by doing from people in the field. No doubt
this also helps with job placement since the instructors are plugged into their fields and can help the
students secure jobs after training. This is to be encouraged in today's environment of high
unemployment, low retention and graduation rates for students many of whom have very high debt
burdens. It isn't and shouldn't be the answer to all community colleges whose missions are much
broader.


seeingsystems10 1 day ago

No one model fits the differing missions of institutions. However, there are some important
characteristics in Tennessee that have been found to be helpful for most starting students: cohort
programs, structure, integrated remediation, hands-on teaching and learning, early advising, and
an emphasis on relevance. Yet it remains difficult at most institutions to find faculty who want to
invest in the collaborative work these processes demand, or the administrative structures that
reward faculty or staff for investing. Sometimes it feels as if we would rather divert the
conversation into how unprepared freshmen are, and how we can't learn anything from another
campus, or how their success is predicated upon their dealing with totally different students, goals,
or environments than to explore how one success can teach us principles that make us better at
what we do.

Like

mdhitchcock 21 hours ago

I teach Geography at a community college and I think a full-day program like this would work great
for my classes. When I give students a research assignment, they leave the classroom, go to another
site and then look for the information, usually either on the internet, or out in the field. If they have
trouble with the assignment and email me with questions, I may not see that email until after 9 pm,
so by the time I respond they will not be able to complete the assignment by the next class period. If
I was present in the room while they were doing their research, I could provide help much more
quickly, as could the other students in the class. Of course the TTC system would require my college
to hire me full time, which is not going to happen.

One thing missing from the discussion here (and from most everything I read about education) is
any idea that what we are teaching may be a big part of the problem. The level of commitment
required by the TCC program screens out people who are not really interested in the subject being
taught--a large majority of the auto body repair students are interested in repairing cars; while
relatively few of my students are interested in doing "Geography," nor are they much interested in
reading books, studying maps, and looking through tables of statistics. Put me in an auto body class
and I would probably end up dropping out, even if they had the best teachers, the best facilities, and
the best pedagogy. The biggest thing we can do to improve completion rates, is reduce the number
of "liberal arts course that students are required to take.


Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
The Chronicle of Higher Education 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037


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