Community Colleges Rewarded for Innovative Remedial Programs

Community Colleges Rewarded for Innovative Remedial Programs that Help Boost Graduation Rates

Nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in the nation's community colleges must take classes to build their basic academic skills. These remedial courses cost taxpayers more than $2 billion a year, yet few students even complete the classes, let alone continue on to graduate.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, and MDC, Inc. announced $16.5 million in grants to 15 community colleges and five states—Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia—to expand successful groundbreaking remedial programs that are key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income and minority students. These innovative programs were developed through Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a multi-year national initiative that is producing some of the most promising work in the country aimed at boosting college completion rates among struggling students.