Developmental education in North Carolina community colleges

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on remediation in community colleges by using policy variation across North Carolina's community colleges to examine how remediation affects various outcomes for traditional-age college students. [The authors] find that being required to take a remedial course (as [the authors] define it in this paper) either in math or in English significantly reduces a student's probability of success in college and also the probability that a student ever passes a college-level math or English course. Among students who are required to take a remedial course in their first semester, however, [the authors] find no adverse effects on the probability of returning for another semester. [The authors] also find differential effects by a student's prior achievement level, family income and gender. Despite the difference in the methodologies, [the] main findings are generally consistent with, albeit somewhat more negative, than those from prior studies based on regression discontinuity designs.

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