Malek, Joyce, and Laura R. Micciche. “A Model of Efficiency: Pre-College Credit and the State Apparatus.” Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators 40.2 (2017): 77-97. Print.

Joyce Malek and Laura R. Micciche discuss the prevalence and consequences of dual and concurrent enrollment initiatives in universities and colleges as well as the effects of Advance Placement (AP) exemptions. They view these arrangements as symptoms of increased “managerial” control of higher education, resulting in an emphasis on efficiency and economics at the expense of learning (79).

As faculty at the University of Cincinnati, they recount the history of various dual-enrollment programs in Ohio. The state’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options program (PSEO), which originated in 1989, as of 2007 gave students as early as 9th and 10th grades the opportunity to earn both high school and college credits (81). A 2008 program, Seniors to Sophomores (STS), initiated by then-Governor Strickland, allowed high-school seniors to “spend their senior year on a participating Ohio college or university campus,” taking “a full load” for college credit (81-82).

After a poor response to STS from students who were unable or unwilling to dispense with a senior year at their regular high school, this program was eventually included in “College Credit Plus” (CCP), in which students beginning in grade seven can earn as many as 30 college credits yearly through courses taught at their high schools by high-school teachers. At the authors’ institution, records of applying students “are assessed holistically and are reviewed against a newly developed state benchmark” that declares them, in the words of the standard, to be “remediation free in a subject” (qtd. in Malek and Micciche 82). The authors state that they were “unable to trace the history of these standards” (83); they speculate that the language arose because students enrolling in the program had proved unable to succeed at college work (82).

Malek and Micciche report that these initiatives often required commitment from writing-program faculty; for example, writing faculty at their university were instructed, along with faculty from history, Spanish, French, and math, to develop programs certifying high-school teachers to teach college coursework (83). Writing faculty were given two weeks to provide this service, with no additional funding and without the ability to design curriculum. The initiative proved to include as well a range of additional unfunded duties, such as class observations and assessment (83-84).

The authors note that funding for all such initiatives is not guaranteed, suggesting that the programs may not survive. In contrast, they note, “AP [Advanced Placement] credit is institutionalized and is here to stay” (84).

The authors see AP as a means of achieving the managerial goals of the “technobureaucrats” (84, 90) increasingly in charge of higher education. They contend that a major objective of such policy makers is the development of a system that delivers students to the university system as efficiently as possible and at the lowest cost to the consumer (78-79). The authors recognize the importance of reducing the cost of higher education—they note that in-state students earning exemption through as many as 36 AP credits can save $11,000 a year in tuition, while out-of-state students can save up to $26, 334 (84). However, in their view, these savings, when applied to writing, come at the cost of both an opportunity to fully encounter the richness of writing as a means of communication and to acquire the kind of practice that results in a confident, capable writer who will succeed in complex academic and professional environments (87).

Malek and Micciche present their experience with AP to illustrate their claim that higher education has been taken out of the hands of faculty and programs and handed over to technocrats (85), a trend that they define as “an alarming statist creep” (85). In Ohio, communicating their intentions only to “staff not positioned to object,” such as advisors, the Board of Regents lowered the AP score deemed acceptable for exemption from a 4 to a 3 (78). This change, the authors write, was “not predicated . . . on any research whatsoever” (87). Its main purpose, in the authors’ view, was to channel students as quickly as possible into Ohio institutions and to reduce students’ actual investment in college to two years (79). Efforts to network in hopes of creating  “a cross-institutional objection to the change” came to naught (78).

Malek and Micciche document the growing incursion of AP into university programs by noting its rapid growth (88). Contending that few faculty know what is involved in AP scores, the authors question the ability of the AP organization to decide in what ways scores translate into “acceptable” coursework and note that to earn a score of 3, a student need correctly answer only “a little more than 50 percent” of the multiple choice questions on the exams (86).

Malek and Micciche express concern that the low status of first-year-composition as well as its nature as a required course makes it especially vulnerable to takeover by state and managerial forces (89-90). Such takeover results in the loss of faculty positions and illustrates the “limited rhetorical power” of writing professionals, who have not succeeded in finding a voice in policy decisions and find themselves in “a reactive stance” in which they ultimately enable the managerial agenda (88-89). They find it unlikely that proposals for enhancing the status of writing studies in general will speak to the economic goals of policy makers outside of the field (90).

Similarly, they contend that “refus[ing] to participate” in the development of dual-credit initiatives will not stem the tide of such programs (92). An alternative is to become deeply involved in making sure that training for teachers in AP or dual or concurrent enrollment programs is as rich and theoretically informed as possible (92).

As a more productive means of strengthening the rhetorical agency of writing faculty, Malek and Micciche suggest “coalition-building” across a wide range of stakeholders (90). They illustrate such coalition-building with other colleges by presenting their alliance with the university’s College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS) to design curricula to help students in CAHS courses improve as writers in their field (90-91). In their view, enlisting other disciplines in this way reinforces the importance of writing and should be seen “as a good thing” (91).

Also, noting that businesses spend “over 3 billion dollars annually to address writing deficiencies” (91), Malek and Micciche advocate for connections with local businesses, suggesting that managerial policy makers will be responsive to arguments about students’ need for “job readiness” (92).

Finally, they suggest enlisting students in efforts to lobby for the importance of college writing. They cite a study asking students to compare their AP courses with subsequent experiences in a required first-year-composition course. Results showed that the AP courses was not a substitute for the college course (93). To build this coalition with students, the authors advocate asking students about their needs and, in response, possibly imagining a “refashioned idea of FYC,” even if doing so means that “we might have to give up some of our most cherished beliefs and values and further build on our strengths” (93).