Should a student be allowed to take the same class five or six times without someone intervening?

An older school of community college thought used to refer to the “right to fail.” It was a version of tough love, combined with a libertarian sense that students know best what they need. If someone needs to fail calculus several times to figure out that engineering might not be the path for them, this camp would say, then so be it. Sometimes the ninth time is the charm. Failure may be the best teacher, but sometimes even the best teacher needs some repetition to get the point across.

Early in my career, I was sympathetic to this viewpoint. After all, it applies in many other spheres of endeavor. For example, it became brutally clear at a young age that professional baseball was not in my future; I indulged my right to fail nearly every time I swung a bat. Crashing out as hard as I did, as early as I did, spared me the frustration that many players feel later in life when they top out in the minor leagues but keep trying to redeem years of sunk cost. Sales positions involve rapid and frequent failure. Actors and comedians know well what it is to crater an audition or to bomb in front of a crowd. Learning what doesn’t work is part of learning what does. Why should academia be any different? Besides, some people are late bloomers, and community colleges are all about second chances.

Two things changed my mind. The first was getting to know students better. The second was changes to federal financial aid.

Students clued me in over time, each in different ways. For a couple of years in grad school, I worked a few hours a week in the campus writing center as a tutor. I remember working with a student on a draft of her paper; the paper was full of grammatical mistakes, awkward constructions, abrupt transitions and the various signs of an uncomfortable writer.

As we discussed each type of mistake, she got flustered, saying that she knew what she did wrong, but she didn’t know why. To prove her point, she showed me a note she had written her friend earlier that day. The note wasn’t eloquent, but it was clear, readable and effective; in other words, it was everything the paper wasn’t. When I asked her what the difference was, she replied that she actually cared about the note.

Aha!

What looked like a lack of ability or knowledge was actually a sign of indifference. When she cared, she was perfectly capable of writing reasonably well. The paper felt forced because it was forced.

What’s true at the assignment level can be true at the course level, too. It’s hard to do well in a class you don’t care about.

But sometimes students get stuck in ruts. (We all do, for that matter.) Tunnel vision can set in, and they might not see an alternative to the path they’re on. That’s when another set of eyes can make a difference.

Years ago, when we still had in-person registration, a student came to me to get permission to take a course for the fourth time. When I asked why he failed it the first three times, he responded that he hated it. I asked why he wanted to retake a class he hated. He responded that it was a requirement. But it wasn’t, I pointed out; it was only a requirement for one major, and we had other majors. He looked puzzled.

I asked if he’d had a class he liked. He mentioned liking a psych class. I told him that we had a psych major and showed what he would need to do to graduate with that. His entire demeanor changed. About a year later, he and his girlfriend stopped by my office to thank me; his entire outlook had changed, and he was on a track he enjoyed. He always had the native ability—he just needed someone to point out that there was another option. Human intervention wasn’t about stopping or scolding, it was about pointing out an option that hadn’t occurred to him.

Later, of course, feds lowered the lifetime limit for Pell eligibility. Suddenly, spending multiple semesters on the same class made it much less likely that a student would finish at all. Whatever the merits of that policy change, its impact is real. Before a student burns through too much aid, I think we have an obligation to interrupt the spiral and see if there’s a more productive path.

That view lacks the simple clarity of “the right to fail,” but I think it comes closer to reflecting the world in which students live. Speed checks save lives, and check-ins save careers. I’d rather have someone intervene than watch the student keep hitting their head against the wall, only to (eventually) walk away with student loans and nothing to show for them.