Short-Semester Courses: Mitigating Unfavorable Precollege Issues for Students at a Technical College

Technical colleges serve a distinct student population and provide an open access point to higher education for students not wishing to attend a university. Graduation and retention rates continue to demonstrate a gap between what technical colleges wish to achieve and the actual achievement. Technical college leaders continue to embrace policies and programs intended to support students at university system schools and which poorly serve the needs of technical college students. As a result, little is known about the lived experiences of technical college students. Data were collected through a six individual semi-structured interview. The six participants of the study were students who had recently completed a short course in General Education at a technical college in the southeastern United States. A review of literature relevant to the study demonstrated a gap in knowledge concerning the lived experiences of technical college students. Tinto’s (1975) model of longitudinal institutional departure provided the framework, the data analysis revealed four themes. Those themes are: (a) accidental discovery of short courses, (b) students prefer the convenience of electronically delivered short courses, (c) time management skills are key to success in short courses, (d) faculty involvement in short courses. The findings of the current study offer opportunities for college leaders and faculty ways to improve the approaches to student retention and success.