I thought this Columbus Dispatch article was very interesting. A study of Ohio college students found that students who had to take remedial classes had a much lower rate of receiving a bachelor's degree after six years.

An Ohio Board of Regents study of students who were freshmen in 1998 found that, by 2004, students who needed remedial classes were only one-third as likely to have a bachelor's degree as those who didn't need such classes.

Fifteen percent of remedial students had bachelor's degrees, compared with 47 percent of nonremedial students.

"When students show up for college and need remedial courses, they're handicapped from the start," said Darrell Glenn, director of performance reporting for the Ohio Board of Regents and head of the study.

"It's sobering to see the differences in those success rates. We're losing people who could be well-educated, and that's the bigger loss."

If students taking remedial classes are so unlikely to get a degree, perhaps we need to redesign these remedial classes. Obviously these students aren't getting something that they need.