Opportunities Exist

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement published their annual survey recently and found that student engagement is low among community college students. The article "Helping Community Colleges Raise the Bar" published on Nov. 17 by Inside Higher Ed claims the reason for low student engagement is because professors and administrators over-empathize with students and have lower expectations of students.

I disagree with their findings.

I do not believe the reason for low student engagement is because the bar is set too low for students. ACC offers many opportunities for students to become engaged with the college outside of classes. However, I think that because the typical community college student has many other priorities, it makes it harder to achieve goals set by their colleges and themselves. Professors and administrators recognize that there may be many more challenges for a community college student so, yes, I do admit that there are professors who are lenient about class assignments.

I do not believe, however, that they are being over-empathetic with students as the article states. If a professor decides to give a student a break, it is for a good reason, like a family emergency. By telling professors that they need to be stricter with students, you are potentially punishing them for having a life outside of school. The article goes on and suggests that in order to raise the bar professors should require more outside class work and force students to work together more often. This is not a solution to the problem. If professors force students to spend more time they may not have, on more class assignments, they risk alienating them.

I suggest that one way to raise student engagement is to utilize technology and offer more online services. It's too difficult to force students to spend more time doing outside class work, but online discussion boards are a great alternative. Students can participate at their leisure and still benefit from working together. Raising student engagement does not require raising a bar. It means that colleges need to reach out in multiple ways, offering various strategies for learning and connections to available college services.

The bottom line is that professors and administrators can only do so much to offer means of improvement. It is up to the individual student at the end of the day.