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Jane* walks your hallways and those of many colleges and universities across the country. Angry, defiant, and frustrated, she is deeply in debt with college loans and without a single college credit to her name.
She's come undone, as the song says, and there is concern among the staffthat she may well hurt someone.
Jane (not her real name, of course) came to our college using federal job retraining funds, Perkins, and Pell grants sewn together in a patchwork of student financial aid. She took out loans for living expenses leftuncovered by other aid. In concert with campus procedures, Jane took a placement exam that showed a very clear need for some developmental coursework. She was not academically ready for college and didn't fare well in her developmental courses. For an entire academic year, Jane was enrolled in pre-college courses that used up financial aid and started a cycle of dependence, frustration, and repetition. What her experience did not do was provide a pathway to a successful career.
Placement tests and high school equivalency marks are the standard measures by which colleges gauge academic readiness for students such as Jane. Such marks often also determine whether Jane and students such as her meet the "ability to benefit" standard.
On its face, the "ability to benefit" standard is intended to protect students such as Jane from going unnecessarily into debt. Simply put, if a student does not show a cognitive ability to benefit from higher education, the college is precluded from offering federal financial aid. Jane can still borrow money from friends, family, and other sources, though, which would likely send her careening into debt, despite a prior indication that she may be incapable of benefitting from college study. Unfortunately, current guidelines cannot tell us whether Jane has an ability to benefit outside of traditional cognitive testing. Though Jane may have demonstrated a cognitive ability to benefit from college, she might present other noncognitive factors, such as prior emotional or psychological distress, that would cause us to reconsider her eligibility.
Placed on a financial aid suspension, Jane was counseled several times and filed an appeal. Since community colleges are driven both by enrollment revenues and by an overwhelming compassion to assist all students-often undergirded with...