Despite the very best efforts of elementary and secondary school personnel, not every student who enrolls in an institution of higher learning is completely prepared academically to do college-level work on the first day of class.  This fact is troublesome to college faculty and administrators as well as many politicians and members of the public.  From time to time, an elected official or college trustee or regent will discover that classes which are not on a college level are being taught at the institution and lament the fact, insist the practice stop, or blame the high schools for doing a poor job in preparing students for college.  These courses go by various names, but are often known as remedial or developmental courses.

 Martha Maxwell, a noted researcher and practitioner in the field of developmental studies, notes “[w]e have always had academically weak, poorly prepared college students.  Perhaps we have them in greater numbers today, but then, more students are currently attending college than ever before.”  (1979, p. 5)  In the current climate of budget cuts to higher education, especially here in Tennessee, it might be instructive to take a look back at the education of underprepared college students in the context of higher education history in the United States.
 

 During this time very few children attended school, or even had access to a school.   Parents were mostly responsible for their children’s schooling, and some who could afford it provided tutors for their children, or at least for their boys.  In some of the northern colonies, subscription schools would come into being for a while, or the townspeople (meaning the male property owners) might vote to support a school lasting a few weeks on a yearly basis.  (Mondale & Patton, 2001).  Not surprisingly, then, there were very few students who could be considered qualified to enter college.  In fact, during the 1600s Harvard graduated only 465 students.  In order to have enough students to have a college, colleges began admitting some students who did not completely meet all admission requirements and providing a modicum of additional help for them.  Vassar College’s president complained of student achievement falling so far below scale as to be unmeasurable (Casazza & Silverman, 1996).

 In the early nineteenth century, some of the oldest American institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Pennsylvania had become so expensive that only the very richest, most privileged families could afford to send their sons to college.  New denominational “hilltop” colleges such as Williams and Amherst arose which catered to poorer students recommended by their ministers.  Nathaniel Hawthorne described those students as “country graduates--rough, brown featured, schoolmaster-looking, half-bumpkin, half scholar, in black, ill-cut broadcloth.”  (Brubacher & Rudy, p. 40)  These “country bumpkins” were among the earliest recipients of what we would now call financial aid.  Most private colleges from their founding provided a few poor students with scholarships and allow others to work their way through school.  Many also allowed a few children of their wealthiest alumni to be admitted regardless of their actual academic qualifications (Maxwell, 1979).

 During the nineteenth century, college curriculum and entrance requirements steadily increased.  No longer were Latin and Greek the sole requirements for pre-college education.  An illustration of the changes was the way mathematics fit into the curriculum at Yale.  Yale did not require arithmetic as an entrance requirement until 1745.  Euclidean geometry, presently studied by most college-bound high school students, was a senior-level course at Yale in 1720.  By 1743 it  had moved down to sophomore status; in 1825, it was studied by third-term freshmen; ten years later Euclidean was no longer offered at Yale and was soon part of the entrance requirements.  By the mid-1800s, algebra had joined geometry as an entrance requirement at all the universities surveyed (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976).

 As a result of increasing the entrance requirements and rigor of the college curriculum, more students arrived at college with insufficient academic preparation.  In 1852, the president of the University of Michigan, Henry Tappan, lamented that colleges were teaching too many courses that belonged in secondary or even elementary schools.  Admitting students with such low skills, he argued in his inaugural address, lowered the standards of the university — an argument that has been repeated ever since — and made poor use of professors.  It was absurd, he said, to take unruly youngsters and somehow transform them into professionals (Maxwell, 1979).  In the mid-nineteenth century, though, many entering college students might only have been thirteen or fourteen years old.  For those who met the university’s standards, though, President Tappan also instituted what he called a “scientific curriculum” which added courses of study such as civil engineering and industrial arts (Casazza & Silverman, 1996).  Coincidentally, Tappan’s first year as president was also the same year that the secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Horace Mann, was able to institute the first compulsory elementary school attendance law in the nation (Band, Lavelle, & Rosenbaum, 2001).

 The quandary of what to do with underprepared students who had to be accepted to assure enough income for the colleges led to the institution of preparatory departments, which could probably be considered the direct forerunner of developmental studies and learning support departments today.  These preparatory departments were, in essence, secondary schools.  One of the best-known was that of the University of Wisconsin, which ran a preparatory department from 1849 until 1880.  It remained controversial throughout its entire existence.  Colleges without preparatory departments still often offered courses or tutorials to bring students who had been admitted conditionally up to college level (Casazza and Silverman, 1996).
 

 Increased access for women. — As the nineteenth century unfolded, there was for the first time some access for women to a college education.  Although “female seminaries” and “academies” had existed in the previous century, these were not degree-granting colleges.  The first women’s colleges actually were founded in the South, beginning with Wesleyan in Macon, Georgia in 1836. The first Northern women’s college was Rockford in Illinois in 1849.  During this time the prevailing attitude still seemed to be that women had no business in colleges and were not truly suited for higher education.  Opponents to educating women argued that admitting women to existing colleges would lower the colleges’ standards.  Admission requirements to women’s colleges, then, were low due to the paucity of elementary and secondary education opportunities for girls.   In the latter half of the nineteenth century, more and more public and private women’s colleges were formed.  Thanks in part to the second Morrill Act, state universities in every state except Georgia, Virginia, and Louisiana admitted women by the early twentieth century (Brubacher and Rudy, 1976).

 Another contribution to the increase in access to higher education during the post-Civil War period was the Hatch Act of 1887 (Casazza & Silverman, 1996), which added the disciplines of applied science to the college curriculum and led to the formation of agricultural extension services and extension courses for farmers.  These services were provided by the agricultural colleges and land-grant colleges made possible by the Morrill Acts.  The second Morrill Act greatly increased funding for such services (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976).

 By the end of the nineteenth century, college enrollment was quickly increasing.  Between 1885 and 1895, enrollment at private colleges in the East grew by 20%, and at state universities by 32% (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976).  Enrollment at all college and universities in the U.S. in 1890 was around 157,000, representing 1.8% of the 18-24-year-old population (Cremin, 1977).  With this swelling of college enrollment and despite the rise in the existence of secondary schools, a great many students were entering colleges and universities in an underprepared state.  By 1870 the University of Michigan had set entrance requirements based on a minimum of a diploma from a secondary school, emulating the model of the German Gymnasium (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976).  The next year, Harvard’s president, Charles Elliott, complained of the lack of grammar and composition skills among the freshman class, and an entrance exam was formulated.  Half the students in 1879 who took this exam failed it and had to be admitted “on condition” (Casazza, 1999).   In 1878, the New York Board of Regents introduced their Regents Exams, which evaluated the students produced by the secondary schools and guided the schools in setting curricula for students to pass the exams.  By the last decade of the nineteenth century the College Entrance Examination Board emerged as a product of the Association  of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland.  The CEEB created testing centers to examine students for their readiness to start college, and many colleges began using its services.

 Higher standards to bridge the gap between secondary and collegiate education were also a goal set when the National Education Association  ([1893] 1969) commissioned in 1892 a report by the Committee of Ten.  This committee then appointed nine “conferences” on various subject areas in languages, sciences, and social sciences, also made up of ten persons each, coming both from secondary school teachers and administrators and college faculty.  The committee’s report included recommendations on course content for all high school students, including study of Latin, Greek, and modern languages; physical and biological sciences; history; and algebra and geometry or commercial mathematics.  The report cautioned (pp. 51-52):

 The preparation of a few pupils for college or scientific school should in the ordinary secondary school be the incidental, and not the principal object.  At the same time, it is obviously desirable that the colleges and scientific schools should be accessible to all boys or girls who have completed creditably  the secondary school course.

 Although higher standards were evolving for America’s high schools, it was still the case in 1895 that only about 40% of public and denominational college entrants were products of public high schools, 20% came from private college preparatory schools, and 40% were products of the colleges’ preparatory programs (Trow, 1982). The hope was that with higher standards set, only students who were fully prepared to enter college would actually attend.  This, of course, did not happen.  Despite higher entrance requirements, in 1907, the majority of students who entered Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia did not meet these requirements.  Eight years later, the U.S. commissioner of education received a report that 350 colleges had preparatory departments, perhaps because most state money went to elementary schools and much less to high schools (Maxwell, 1979).  Overall participation in elementary and secondary schooling was on the rise, however; by 1910 , 74% of children ages five to seventeen were in school (Cremin, 1977), so one could argue the general education level in the United States was certainly increasing.

 In part as a consequence of the Committee of Ten’s report, a stronger, more diverse secondary curriculum including vocational training was in place before the first quarter of the twentieth century had passed.  Since more students were receiving a secondary education, proposals came about to shorten the amount of time spent in college, since in theory a preparatory program would no longer be needed for most students.  In the 1910s the University of Chicago established a division of liberal studies which would provide only two years of college for those who were unable to continue studies beyond that point.  This could be considered the beginning of the junior colleges; by 1917 there were seventy-six such institutions (Casazza & Silverman, 1996).

 Another such exemplary program was the General College of the University of Minnesota, which began in 1932 as an experiment to improve retention of undergraduate students.  Its purposes have included acclimating students to university life; teaching general education courses, including introductory courses in various fields; providing academic advising to students; providing courses leading to certificates and associate degrees (a task later moved to community colleges upon their formation);  and working with underprepared students (Taylor, 2001).

 During the first three decades of the twentieth century, many colleges were offering courses on “how to study” and in improving reading skills.  Some of these were so popular after their title was changed from “remedial reading” to “the Reading Course” that even upperclassmen, graduate students, and law school professors took them at Harvard (Casazza, 1999).  During the 1930s many other colleges and universities had reading courses, following the institution of remedial reading courses in public schools.    Maxwell (1979) speculates that the increase in reading courses was due in part to the growth of general survey courses in subjects such as the social sciences beginning in 1929.  As an alternative to remedial college classes, some students took an extra year of high school after graduation or enrolled in a private preparatory school (Maxwell, 1979).  Even with the growth of students attending college, and the growth of students receiving some sort of remedial or transitional help, in the 1930s less than 10% of high school graduates attended college (Maxwell, 2000).  That figure would soon change.

 Changes occurred in the college curriculum and college life in the early 1940s during World War II.  To allow quicker completion of college course work, courses were shortened to as little as eight weeks and intensive summer programs were introduced.  The SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review) method for reading was developed by Frank Robinson of Ohio State University to assist servicemen in speedier learning from these time-shortened courses (Maxwell, 1979).
 

 One such transitional program that began shortly after the GI Bill was found at the University of Maryland. Following the model set by the General College of the University of Minnesota, in 1948 Maryland implemented a “Special and Continuing Studies” program for students admitted on probation.  Most of these were returning servicemen.  All had high school grade point averages of less than 2.0 and had to take a reduced load and study skills classes.  They remained in the program, which included special courses, tutoring in other classes, and counseling advising, until they had earned a GPA of at least 2.0 (Maxwell, 2000).

 A large gain in Americans' access to higher education came in the 1950s and 1960s with the advent of the civil rights movement.  Students of color were now admitted to more colleges after Brown v. Board of Education and similar court decisions struck down “separate but equal” facilities and de facto segregation in schools at all levels.  During part of the 1960s and 1970s -- roughly from 1963 to 1973 -- many colleges were able to be more selective in their admissions policies due to the sheer population increase as the first students of the Baby Boom reached college age, so proportionally fewer underprepared students were admitted to four-year colleges (Boylan, 1995). At about the same time, though, junior and community colleges were springing up all over the country, again providing access (and often open admissions) to Americans who wanted to begin a higher education.

 By the 1970s, many of the students entering college were first-generation college students--those who had no family history of attending college.  Many of these students scored in the bottom third of academic tests, but were eager to seek a higher education, seeing it as a way to rise to better career opportunities and live better than their parents did.  New students could also be found who had special needs such as learning disabilities and health issues.  Many came from poor families.  An increasing number of women (many from these same categories) and students older than the traditional college student were also now attending college (Casazza, 1999).
 

 As research in the field blossomed, it became more apparent that simply having remedial courses was not sufficient to ensure success for higher-risk students.  Researchers found other factors besides high school academic preparation which led to successfully making the transition to college classes.  As a result, even more college programs added learning centers, laboratories, assessment and placement into proper classes, advising and counseling, components which had earlier been seen in working with veterans.  Personal and academic development components were often integrated into courses.  “The result,” says Boylan (1995), “was much more than simple remediation of academic skill deficiencies. . . . Subsequently, this process became known as ‘developmental education.’  Developmental education is not a euphemism for remediation.”  This approach, according to Boylan (1995), is now the norm at most institutions serving underprepared students.

 National Center for Developmental Education. — As developmental education began to be viewed as a field of its own with its own research base, some colleges became especially known for their research work in the field.  One of the earliest was Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina (Spann, 1996).  The Kellogg Foundation provided a grant to the university in 1976 to establish a consortium of four-year and  community colleges in finding ways to better the way colleges served their underprepared students.  In its earliest years, the consortium served only western North Carolina, but soon it expanded its service area to include the entire nation.  This consortium became known as the National Center for Developmental Education.  Its mission includes reviewing and evaluating developmental studies programs in institutions and entire states, providing staff development for developmental faculty and staff, evaluating and profiling diagnostic instruments used in placing students, and assisting institutions in improving their developmental studies programs.  The NCDE founded and continues to publish two of the journals associated with developmental education; their current names are the Journal of Developmental Education (first published in 1978) and Research in Developmental Education (begun in 1983).   The NCDE is also known for the Kellogg Institute, which is a summer program for in-depth training of existing developmental studies faculty.  Along with the NCDE, the college of education at Appalachian State also offers master’s and specialist’s degrees in education with a major in developmental education.    (The other universities which have established graduate programs in developmental education -- at least one leading to a doctorate -- are Grambling, National-Louis, Southwest Texas State, and University of Missouri-Kansas City [Boylan, 2001]).

 National Association for Developmental Education. — The same year (1976) that the NCDE was formed, some Chicago-area faculty members who worked in programs for underprepared students met and formed an organization known for the first eight years as the National Association for Remedial/Developmental Education in Postsecondary Education, or NAR/DSPE.   The founding president was Dr. Gary Saretsky.  Soon the term “remedial education” fell out of favor with practitioners in the field, although it is still used by many outside researchers, journalists, and government officials, and NAR/DSPE was renamed the National Association for Developmental Education, or NADE.  Local chapters outside the Midwest were soon formed, beginning with a chapter in New York City in 1979 (which later dissolved) and in South Carolina.  During the 1980s the association began its tradition of annual conferences in different cities, bringing faculty, advisors, and directors together to share ideas on teaching, research, and program structure.  The Journal of Developmental Education was adopted as the official journal of the association in 1983.  By 1990 NADE had 28 chapters and had established several awards for outstanding developmental education programs, educators, students, and research.  Individual membership grew from about 400 in 1980, to nearly 2000 in 1990 (Boylan, 2000).  By 1999 the national membership had increased to 1551, with memberships in state and regional chapters numbering over 4000 (NADE, 2001).

 College Reading and Learning Association. — Other organizations also arose during 1960s and 1970s to bring together college and university persons working with underprepared students.  The College Reading and Learning Association began in 1966 as the Western College Reading Association, made up mostly of professionals from the western United States.  During the 1970s it grew into an organization billing itself as “The Blue Chip organization for college reading professionals” (CRLA, 2001).  The association began to hold yearly conferences which attendees remember as having unusual problems such as airline strikes and funding cuts keeping many people, including keynote speakers, from attending; found but never claimed wedding rings; and a tornado touching down near the conference site days before the start of the conference; and a keynote speaker dying shortly before the start of a conference.  In 1979 the name was changed to the Western College Reading and Learning Association in recognition that many members worked not just with reading, but also with advising, study skills, learning assistance, and mathematics.  In the 1980s the association developed an international certification program for tutors.  By 1989 membership no longer consisted solely of persons from the west, so the “Western” was dropped from the name to assume its current name of CRLA.  Today the CRLA publishes the Journal of College Reading and Learning as well as a quarterly newsletter.  It identifies its mission as a forum for improving “teaching, learning, and research in post-secondary environments” in “learning improvement services, courses, and programs” and encouraging “practical application to research . . . and innovative strategies that enhance college teaching and student learning”  (CRLA, 2001).

 National College Learning Center Association. — A third, slightly newer, major organization serving what are sometimes called learning assistance professionals is the National College Learning Center Association.  As with NADE and CRLA, the NCLCA began in 1985 as a regional organization, the Midwest  College Learning Center Association.  The MCLCA began with 46 members at its first conference in 1986.  In 1999, in recognition of its membership coming from all over the United States and Canada it voted to become the National College Learning Center Association.  The major focus of NCLCA is on learning centers, which it defines as “place[s] where students can be taught to become more efficient and effective learners.”  Learning centers encompass seminars, tutorials (human and computer-assisted), labs, and supplemental instruction.  In addition to annual conferences, the association publishes the Learning Assistance Review and holds institutes for professionals (NCLCA, 2001).

 An umbrella organization. — By 1986 leaders in the field saw a need for the various organizations involved in helping underprepared students and in learning assistance to work together.  The American Council of Developmental Education Associations (ACDEA) was formed as an alliance between leaders of NADE, NCLCA, CRLA, the NCDE, and groups whose interests intersect with developmental education such as the College Reading Association, the American College Personnel Association, and the National Tutoring Association.  The ACDEA is made up of the executive officers of the member organizations and encourages collaboration among the constituencies as well as recognizing members of the various groups who have made significant contributions to the field (NCLCA, 2001; Boylan, 2000).

 These organizations help improve the teaching of underprepared students and boost the morale of faculty involved in this endeavor.  Their national conferences and state or regional conferences allow developmental educators to network and exchange ideas.  Through conferences and journals, the organizations encourage a continuation of research on ways to help students learn to learn.
 

 NCES (1996) reports the percentage of freshmen enrolled in developmental courses has not increased appreciably during the 1990s:  in 1989, about 30% of freshmen at higher education institutions were enrolled in at least one developmental class; in 1995, that figure was 29%.  Not surprisingly, that figure was much higher in two-year institutions and lower in four-year colleges.  NADE figures (in Damashek, 1999a) say that 38% of incoming college freshmen need a developmental English class.  For math, the figure is 44%, and reading, 34%.  (Since not all institutions have mandatory placement for people needing developmental courses, these latter figures may reflect the need rather than the enrollment.)  Minorities had a higher representation in developmental enrollments.  The average time students were enrolled in developmental courses was less than one year (NCES, 1996).  Another national study from earlier in the 1990s (Boylan, Bonham, & Bliss, 1994) gave additional insight into the faces of today’s developmental students:  the mean age of developmental students was 23 at two-year colleges and 19 at four-year; slightly more than half (53% and 54%) of the students were female; most (77% and 98%) were seeking degrees, and nearly a third (32%) of two-year college students were attending part-time as opposed to 8% at four-year institutions.  All of these statistics are similar to their proportion in the overall U. S. college population.  About two-thirds of the students were white, slightly less than in the general college population. The mean high school grade point average of developmental students was 2.40 at two-year colleges and 2.58 at four-year institutions, somewhat lower than their non-developmental peers.  However, “they are able to persist, remain in good standing, and complete degrees” (p. 3).  Garnett (1997), in fact, cites a study of the Minnesota Community College System that shows that “students who complete developmental courses do as well as those who don’t need the courses.”    This is an important accomplishment, Garnett notes, since “only about 35% of current high school graduates take college preparatory classes.”

 The increase in professional activities among developmental faculty has led to a body of theory as a basis for research.  After several years of study, NADE in 1996 adopted the following definition of developmental education:

  Developmental education is a field of practice and research within higher education with a theoretical foundation in developmental psychology and learning theory. It promotes the cognitive and affective growth of all postsecondary learners, at all levels of the learning continuum. Developmental education is sensitive and responsive to individual differences and special needs among learners.
  Developmental education programs and services commonly address academic preparedness, diagnostic assessment and placement, development of general and discipline-specific learning strategies, and affective barriers to learning.
  Developmental education includes, but is not limited to:

 all forms of learning assistance, such as tutoring, mentoring, and supplemental instruction

 personal, academic, and career counseling

 academic advisement, and

 coursework.  (NADE, 2001)

 Legislative battles. -- Even as developmental education programs grew and became more defined during the 1990s, they also came under attack yet again, and some programs were cut or abolished.  As always, the arguments were familiar:  admitting underprepared students watered down the curriculum (echoing Tappan’s comments of 1852), and states were paying twice for students to learn the same material.  Boylan (2001) notes that from 1990 to 2000, thirty-four states proposed eliminating developmental education to one degree or another.  However, the proposals were voted down by legislatures in 29 of those states.  Even in areas where developmental programs were voted down, such as Sacramento and New York City, there were public protests against reduction of such programs, and the programs did not completely disappear but transformed in some manner.  The experiences of the City University of New York and the University of Minnesota provide some examples of the kinds of changes that happened during the 1990s.

 Program elimination at CUNY. — In New York City, after a proposal pushed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the trustees voted in 1999 to virtually eliminate developmental classes at the City University of New York’s four-year campuses.  Cronholm (1999), interim president of SUNY’s Baruch College at the time, expressed the view of those in favor of Giuliani’s proposal in an opinion article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, arguments which are similar to those of other opponents through the years:

 . . . offering pre-collegiate work in colleges and universities is a grievous error. . . .  Curricular deflation and grade inflation are two of the highest costs we pay. Teaching underprepared students unquestionably lowers standards. . . .  The only way we can change the status quo — and the current excessive need for remediation of high-school graduates — is to reserve college for those who can do college-level work.  (pp. B6-B7)

Cronholm asserted that the presence of underprepared students necessitated lowering both entrance and graduation standards and is a sign of a lack of academic integrity.  Students needing remediation tended to graduate at seriously lower rates, the article implied.  One respondent, Everett (1999), a former SUNY trustee, noted that even though the courses were eliminated, remediation was not.  About a fifth of the students admitted to the college did not pass the SUNY entrance exams; those students were given other opportunities for catching up, such as tutoring.  Everett noted that students “requiring modest amounts of remediation graduated at a rate only 1 percentage point lower than that for students requiring no help” (p. B3).

 Changes at the University of Minnesota. — Another story of change in the light of concern over maintaining standards with a different outcome was the transformation of the University of Minnesota’s General College (Taylor, 2001).  In 1986 a proposal was made to delete the General College as part of a proposal to eliminate redundancies in the university.  After much debate and wrangling, the General College instead was given a new mission in 1991.  It would have its own faculty members instead of coordinating activities from many parts of the university and was given its own budget.  All developmental studies courses and introductory courses in core fields for many freshman students were made a part of the General College.  The transformation was complete by 1993, by which time merit pay had been established and faculty had been recruited who would not only teach but also produce research in the field.  The Center for Research in Developmental Education and Urban Literacy came into being at this time.

 In 1996, the president of the university wanted to improve the image of the University of Minnesota as a more selective institution by reducing the number of students admitted.  He brought up two issues specifically related to developmental education: Is open access  compatible with excellence?  And was developmental education a field the university wanted to invest in?  Eventually the regents of the university directed the president to keep the program, but reduce the number of developmental students admitted.  The next year the president retired, and one member appointed to the search committee happened to be the dean of the General College.  The next president mentioned the General College as an important asset to the university.  The General College hired research scholars who, in addition to teaching, produced journals and monographs, received over a million and a half dollars in grants, added minors in developmental and distance education to the graduate programs, sponsored colloquia on future directions for developmental education, and created an advising system that became a model for other programs in the country.  The General College’s Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy nicely complements the efforts of the NCDE at Appalachian State.
 

 Although developmental programs have rarely been popular, they have served a function to increase access to higher education for generations of college students.  But for as many years as extra help has been available, there have been critics within and outside of higher education who would rather not have the programs or students in college.  At times, the debate becomes shrill.  Funding levels have risen and fallen many times.  Yet some sort of assistance has continued to exist in various forms.  What do experts in the field believe lies ahead for developmental education?

 John Gardner, who founded the First-Year Experience seminars and conferences, believes developmental education needs to expand to survive and be recognized by other faculty as a legitimate discipline (Spann, 2000b).  He sees a shift underway from “‘what do I want to teach?’ to ‘how do students learn?’” (Spann, 2000b,  p. 23).  Some kind of freshman seminar offered by colleges could benefit not only underprepared students, but all new students.  He sees the current backlash against developmental education as an extension of the attack on affirmative action: “if you want to help the disadvantaged, you’d better be doing something for all students” (p. 23).  The field, he says, should broaden to help all undergraduate students, including juniors and seniors, to progress in their academic careers and even get ready for graduate school if they plan to continue their studies.

 Gardner also points out a need for credentialing.  Developmental educators would receive more respect if more had doctorates (in most cases, someone teaching developmental classes, even at a university, is required only to have a master’s degree) and their degrees were in a field other than education, since education is probably the next most maligned field in the universities.  Along with a higher standard of preparation, focusing on more research would improve faculty standing.  Developmental educators, Gardner believes, would be the perfect candidates for guiding faculty and staff development programs, especially if they use some of the same innovations they use with their students.  Finally, Gardner feels that developmental faculty need to recruit their successors, especially men.  (Developmental education is one of the few areas in higher education where the vast majority of faculty are females.)  Unfortunately, there is still a bit of sexism which gives lower status to female-dominated areas, so attracting more men so the numbers of men and women were equal would bring a little more respectability to the profession.

 Damashek (1999a, 1999b) interviewed several recognized leaders in developmental education such as Martha Maxwell, Hunter Boylan, David Arendale, Diane Vukovich, Kaylene Gebert, and Silva Santiago for their views on the future of developmental education.  Some studies have shown that students taking stand-alone developmental reading classes do not improve students’ reading skills and may actually lead to increased dropout rates.  Maxwell feels that, in line with research results, more effective reading courses will be paired with a college core course.

 To some, there seems to be calling for moving all developmental courses to two-year institutions.  Boylan (in Damashek, 1999a) does not see that as a trend--it has been called for in about 30 states, but only a handful have actually done so.  He predicts that competitive state universities may eventually get rid of developmental programs, but others will keep them, especially in economically poor states (Damashek, 1999b).  Maxwell believes more programs will be moved to the community colleges, since they already provide the majority of remedial coursework, a trend she charts as having begun in 1980 (Damashek, 1999b).  Maxwell (in Damashek, 1999a) also believes that the practice of the 1930s of weak college-bound students taking an extra year of high school will return, and colleges (even two-year institutions) capping enrollments, meaning less-prepared students will have a harder time to get in to college.

 In the near future, Arendale and Boylan (Damashek, 1999a and 1999b) both believe developmental classes will become part of an integrated system of support, supplanting stand-alone classes.  Arendale is a staunch advocate of supplemental instruction as described above.  Several authorities believe developmental programs will become comprehensive academic support or learning assistance programs encompassing such elements as professional development, program evaluation, a theory of developmental education, diagnosis and assessment of students before entering and throughout their class work, tutorial programs, supplemental instruction, paired courses, and short workshops for current classes as well as preparing for graduate admissions tests.

 Developmental education has a fairly long history in American higher education, albeit a constantly rocky one.  For many varied reasons, generations of students have come to college inadequately prepared to do college-level work.  Colleges have responded with tutors and special classes, eventually creating departments or programs geared specifically to dealing with these at-risk students, and turning out additional college graduates who might not have made it without the extra boost.  For the last century, support courses and programs for underprepared students has been seen as “expendable and temporary” (M. Maxwell, quoted in Damashek, 1999a).  The fact remains that there was never a golden age when all students came to college ready to do college work, just as there has never been a golden age in which all elementary and secondary students worked on grade level and learned everything they were supposed to learn.  Even with all sorts of school reform, developmental programs have not gone away, nor are they likely to entirely disappear in the foreseeable future.  High school students will continue to make poor choices of what courses to take, or fail to take the high school curriculum seriously.  Life circumstances will change, and some adults will find themselves as suddenly single parents needing a college education to obtain a job to support themselves and their children.  Other adults will lose their jobs and realize a high school education is simply not sufficient to advance their careers.   Still others will come out of military service or will retire early from work and decide to further their education after many years outside a classroom.  All these people benefit from open admissions at community colleges and special admissions at four-year institutions.  Most of these people to be successful in college will need at least some extra help beyond what is available in a college-level class, and they will receive that help in some manner, whether it is from specific courses or embedded assistance programs.  And, thanks to what we might as well call developmental education,  a significant proportion of these underprepared learners will become successful learners with at least one degree and contribute more to the American economy and enrich the American experience.

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