Remedial Placement Testing in Community Colleges: What Resources Are Required, and What Does It Cost?

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate the costs to colleges and students of remedial placement systems at community college. Using the ingredients method, we catalog the inputs required to perform placement tests and price these inputs out to derive the total cost of assigning students to either college-level or remedial courses. We use detailed data from three community colleges for our costs analysis. We find that colleges spend $30–$44 per student per subject (English or math) on assessing students for placement into remediation. We find that student time represents a substantial proportion of the total burden of placement testing; when this time is included, the total costs rise to $54–$71 per student per subject. These amounts appear low compared with the costs of “treatment” (remediation) and compared with the costs of misplacement of students into remediation instead of college-level courses.