Pathways through Montgomery College: Developmental Education
Accessibility is a fundamental characteristic of community colleges: our doors are open to all. Some students who arrive at community colleges, however, are not prepared for college-level work, because of academic training, learning style, or linguistic background.
This is where developmental education—in other eras, called “remedial education”—fills
in the gap. MC offers developmental education courses in English, reading, and mathematics.
While students do not earn college credit for these courses, they are able to use
financial aid for them. The drawback is that the aid dollars used for developmental
ed courses count against the student’s final total. So the more classes one takes
in developmental education, the fewer dollars one has left for the credit courses
that count toward a degree.
For this reason—along with other financial pressures facing community colleges—there
is a movement to streamline such course work in order to help students maximize their
credits and allow institutions to teach more credit-bearing courses, practices that
ultimately drive student completion.
