Failing at Remediation? College Remedial Coursetaking, Failure and Long-term Student Outcomes

Colleges offer remedial coursework to help students enrolling in post-secondary education who are not adequately prepared to succeed in college-level courses. Despite the prevalence of remediation, previous research presents contradictory findings regarding its short- and long-term effects. This paper uses a doubly robust inverse probability weighting strategy to examine whether the degree completion and wage outcomes associated with remedial education vary by passing or failing remedial coursework. Using the NLSY Postsecondary Transcript-1997 data, we find that almost 30% of remedial course takers fail a remedial course. Students who took and passed their remedial coursework at both two-year and four-year colleges were more likely to graduate from college than similar students who did not take remediation. For both two-year and four-year college entrants, students who failed remedial coursework were less likely to obtain a bachelor's degree and, among degree receivers, took longer to graduate. Students who entered two-year or four-year colleges and who failed remedial coursework earned lower wages over time compared to similar students who never took remediation. Among four-year college entrants, these wage differences seem to be explained completely by degree completion. However, wage differences for two-year college entrants still remain after accounting for degree receipt. Our findings thus suggest that while many students may benefit from remedial education, a substantial number of students struggle with remedial coursework and fail to realize the intended benefits.