TL;DR: As people get older, it’s common for people to acquire responsibilities that make it hard to focus on school (ex: kids, elderly parents). Fairly high confidence that this is a big factor in community college grades.
As someone whose parent teaches basic math at community college, and who attended community college for 2 years myself (before transferring)...
I have absolutely seen some people pick up these skills late. The work ethic & directedness of community college high-achievers is often notably better than that of people in their late teens.
They also usually have healthier attitudes around failure (relative to the high-achieving teens), which sometimes makes them better at recovering from an early bad grade. Relatedly, the UCs say their CC transfers have much lower drop-out rates.
One major “weakness” I can think of, is that adults are probably going in fully-cognizant that school feels like an “artificial environment.” Some kids manage to not notice this until grad school.
From my mom’s work, I know that the grading distribution in high-school-remedial math classes is basically bimodal: “A”s and “F”s, split almost 50-50.
The #1 reason my mom cites for this split, is probably a responsibilities and life-phase difference?
A lot of working class adults are incredibly busy. Many are under more stress and strain than they can handle, at least some of the time. (The really unlucky ones, are under more strain than they can really handle basically all of the time, but those are less likely to try to go to community college.)
If someone is holding down a part-time job, doesn’t have a lot in savings, is married, is taking care of a kid, and is caring for their elderly mother? That basically means a high load of ambient stress and triage, and also having 5 different avenues for random high-priority urgent crises (ex: health problems involving any of these) to bump school out of the prioritization matrix.
(Notably, “early achievers” on the child-having front usually also end up a bit crippled academically. I think that’s another point in favor of “life phase” or “ambient responsibility load” theory being a big deal here, in a way that competes with or even cannibalizes academic focus/achievement.)
My take-away is that if you have a bunch in savings, and don’t have a kid, then my bet is that learning a lot of curricula late is likely to not be a problem. Might actually be kinda fun?
But if you’re instead juggling a dozen other life responsibilities, then God help you. If your class has tight deadlines, you may have to conduct a whole lot of triage to make it work.
Some of the other F-grade feed-ins, for completion’s sake...
A lot of people went to a bad high school. Some have learned helplessness, and don’t know how to study. Saw the occasional blatant cheating habit, too.
Community colleges know this, and offer some courses that are basically “How to study”
So much of many middle-class cultures is just hammering “academics matter” and “advice on how to study or network” into your brain. Most middle-class students still manage to miss the memo on 1-2 key study skills or resources, though. Maybe everyone should go to “how to study” class…
Personally? As a teen, I didn’t know how to ask for help, and I couldn’t stand sounding like an idiot. Might have saved myself some time, if I’d learned how to do that earlier.
Nobody uses office-hours enough.
At worst, it’s free tutoring. At best, it’s socially motivating and now the teacher feels personally invested in your story and success.
“High-achievers who turned an early D into an A” are frequently office-hour junkies.
Someone with a big family crisis, is probably still screwed even if they go to office hours. Past some threshold, people should just take a W.
A few people just genuinely can’t do math, in a “it doesn’t fit in their brain” kind of way
My mom thinks this exists, but only accounts for <1%
TL;DR: As people get older, it’s common for people to acquire responsibilities that make it hard to focus on school (ex: kids, elderly parents). Fairly high confidence that this is a big factor in community college grades.
As someone whose parent teaches basic math at community college, and who attended community college for 2 years myself (before transferring)...
I have absolutely seen some people pick up these skills late. The work ethic & directedness of community college high-achievers is often notably better than that of people in their late teens.
They also usually have healthier attitudes around failure (relative to the high-achieving teens), which sometimes makes them better at recovering from an early bad grade. Relatedly, the UCs say their CC transfers have much lower drop-out rates.
One major “weakness” I can think of, is that adults are probably going in fully-cognizant that school feels like an “artificial environment.” Some kids manage to not notice this until grad school.
From my mom’s work, I know that the grading distribution in high-school-remedial math classes is basically bimodal: “A”s and “F”s, split almost 50-50.
The #1 reason my mom cites for this split, is probably a responsibilities and life-phase difference?
A lot of working class adults are incredibly busy. Many are under more stress and strain than they can handle, at least some of the time. (The really unlucky ones, are under more strain than they can really handle basically all of the time, but those are less likely to try to go to community college.)
If someone is holding down a part-time job, doesn’t have a lot in savings, is married, is taking care of a kid, and is caring for their elderly mother? That basically means a high load of ambient stress and triage, and also having 5 different avenues for random high-priority urgent crises (ex: health problems involving any of these) to bump school out of the prioritization matrix.
(Notably, “early achievers” on the child-having front usually also end up a bit crippled academically. I think that’s another point in favor of “life phase” or “ambient responsibility load” theory being a big deal here, in a way that competes with or even cannibalizes academic focus/achievement.)
My take-away is that if you have a bunch in savings, and don’t have a kid, then my bet is that learning a lot of curricula late is likely to not be a problem. Might actually be kinda fun?
But if you’re instead juggling a dozen other life responsibilities, then God help you. If your class has tight deadlines, you may have to conduct a whole lot of triage to make it work.
Some of the other F-grade feed-ins, for completion’s sake...
A lot of people went to a bad high school. Some have learned helplessness, and don’t know how to study. Saw the occasional blatant cheating habit, too.
Community colleges know this, and offer some courses that are basically “How to study”
So much of many middle-class cultures is just hammering “academics matter” and “advice on how to study or network” into your brain. Most middle-class students still manage to miss the memo on 1-2 key study skills or resources, though. Maybe everyone should go to “how to study” class…
Personally? As a teen, I didn’t know how to ask for help, and I couldn’t stand sounding like an idiot. Might have saved myself some time, if I’d learned how to do that earlier.
Nobody uses office-hours enough.
At worst, it’s free tutoring. At best, it’s socially motivating and now the teacher feels personally invested in your story and success.
“High-achievers who turned an early D into an A” are frequently office-hour junkies.
Someone with a big family crisis, is probably still screwed even if they go to office hours. Past some threshold, people should just take a W.
A few people just genuinely can’t do math, in a “it doesn’t fit in their brain” kind of way
My mom thinks this exists, but only accounts for <1%