More Indiana students who head to college right after high school these days are ready to tackle the course work there. But the state's higher education chief says there's still much more work to be done in preparing students for the rigors of postsecondary academics.
A new report put out by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education says 77 percent of members of the class of 2013 who went to college didn't require remedial classes once they got there.
That's 5 percent better than the class of 2012, which posted a 72 percent rate.
But, Teresa Lubbers, Indiana's Commissioner for Higher Education, said "I'm in no way celebrating this as 'we can check this off our list and move on to another issue,' because that's not the case."
The new numbers posted by Hoosier high schoolers mirror a three-year trend that shows more students are going to college. And more are prepared to do so, Lubbers said during a phone interview last week.
In St. Joseph County, 84 percent of students going to college did so without remediation. And Marshall County had the highest college readiness levels in the state, with only 10 percent of students needing to take developmental classes in college prior to enrolling in for-credit course work.
For students who go to college, being ready for postsecondary work is important for many reasons, Lubbers said.
For one, financial aid is available for only four years. The time spent in remedial courses reduces the amount of aid available to cover credit-bearing courses later.
The likelihood of graduating also goes down dramatically for students who begin college in remedial courses, she said. And even for those who do stick it out, it takes longer to finish.