Senator David Pearce says in order for more Missourians to get degrees, there are several things that need to be fixed. He says retaining students at school is difficult, but in order to keep students in school, there are two other things that need to be addressed: transfer credits and remediation.
He says his bill seeks to do that by creating a library of 25 courses that could be transferred between any public two or four-year university in the state. He says the bill also sets up “reverse transfer” which allows someone who has a number of college credits to transfer to a two-year college to get an associates if that person can’t finish their bachelor’s degree. Lastly it sets up a best-practices standard for remediation, which is the process of bringing students up to speed in basic courses like math or english if they didn’t learn everything they needed to in high school.
Representative Mike Thompson sponsors the same bill in the House. Thompson says sometimes remediation courses just go too fast, or arent’ taught well, so students get frustrated and give up, so he wants to streamline how they’re taught in both 2 and 4 year state schools.
The bill will be debated in the coming legislative session.
AUDIO Allison Blood reports. Mp3 [1:01]