In this paper, we examine the impact of timing of remediation (at which point students take remedial courses during their undergraduate career), on a variety of college outcomes.

There is a growing body of literature on the role of remediation in higher education. Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of remedial coursework on improving student outcomes (Attewell et al. 2006; Bettinger and Long 2009; Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum 2002; Martorell and McFarlin 2011; McCabe 2000; Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez 2012). However, the research focus has centered on remedial programs. We argue that timing of remediation is an important factor that needs to be considered in the discussion of remediation effectiveness.

The research in this paper is driven by two competing policy proposals: one would require that students who need remediation take developmental coursework immediately upon entry into college, while the other allows students to delay remediation so that they can better assimilate to college life. 

We collected data from a cohort of 21,895 first-time associate degree-seeking freshmen enrolled in 10 colleges of a large, urban public university system. Using event history models, we analyzed the effect of the timing of remediation on exit from remediation and other academic outcomes, e.g. one-year retention, three-year associate degree completion, and three-year transfer into a baccalaureate program. Our modeling recognizes the competing outcome, i.e. dropout, and controls for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, high school grades, placement test scores, college attended, and subject area of remedial need, i.e. reading, writing, or mathematics.

Our results suggest that compared to procrastinators, students who take remedial courses in the first term are more likely to exit from remediation, to be retained after one year, and to complete their degrees successfully, controlling for the other factors in our models.

These findings have led the university to adopt a new policy requiring students to address remedial need immediately, either before matriculating or in their first semester of college. The results are important to both researchers and policymakers exploring ways to better improve the outcomes of students with remedial needs.