Northwest Indiana Postsecondary Regional Partnership

College Readiness

Purdue University Northwest was awarded a grant by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) in 2012 to improve the transition from K-12 to post-secondary education. The Northwest Indiana Postsecondary Regional Partnership was created which conducted a broad investigation of the concept of college readiness in mathematics and English language arts. Regular meetings were held with faculty members from Ivy Tech Community College and local high schools. This resulted in a wide-ranging analysis of the definition of college readiness. Meetings have involved a mixture of general sessions and discipline-specific working groups that delved into specific assignments, rubrics, and instructional principles instituted in the high school and college classroom.

Brief Results

The partnership identified two important components integral to college readiness: student's attitudes towards learning and their discipline specific content knowledge. For each component, specific criteria were identified that are characteristic of college readiness. Below is a short summary of our results.

1. Facts and Figures concerning the number of Indiana high school graduates that need to enroll in remedial classes in college.
2. Attitude and Study Habits For English and Mathematics. A student that is college ready exhibits the following characteristics:
   • Completes homework assignments and views it as a means to learn material.
   • Views attendance as important to success in course.
   • Willing to adapt to learning environments not compatible with his or her learning style.
   • Self motivated. Seeks needed information without prompting.
   • Asks 'when, why and what if' questions.
3. Content knowledge For English. Students prepared for college English courses have these characteristics:
   • They are critical readers and thinkers.
   • Their writing process shows competence in areas such as:
     • Thesis development
     • Essay organization
     • Prewriting activities, including generating ideas, narrowing subjects, and determining audiences
     • Composition processes, including drafting, collaborating, evaluating, and revising
     • Library research
     • Evidence
     • Analysis
     • Argument
   • They obtained 8 credits for honors or advanced language arts
   • They earned credit for English 9, 10, 11, 12 without repeating a course
4. Content knowledge For Mathematics. Students prepared for college mathematics courses have these characteristics:
   • They have a confident knowledge of many of the mathematical topics taught in high school.
   • They have a B or better average in 8 credits of college bound level math & statistics w/o repeating a course.
   • They can view the same topic from several points of view, therefore they can solve a variety of problems related to a topic.
   • They can analyze problems and recognize pertinent concepts even when no reference to those concepts are mentioned in the problem.
   • They are mathematically autonomous.
   • They can clearly explain their solutions to others. Furthermore, they can analyze the mathematical arguments of their peers.
   • Simple examples illustrating the reasoning and understanding required in college mathematics.

Full Results

College Readiness and English gives full results for English.
College Readiness and Mathematics gives full results for mathematics.