Yes, I suspect that the real reason the students "don't need" remedial programs to complete their degrees is that the specific degrees are actually vocational rather than academic.

An incoming student that can't write a cogent essay or do basic math problems simply isn't ready for any traditional degree program. The best they can do, if they're not going to grind through remedial courses, is to start training for a job.

>Yes, I suspect that the real reason the students "don't need" remedial programs to complete their degrees is that the specific degrees are actually vocational rather than academic.

x2. The more academic requirements of a 4yr degree are not strict necessities of those fields. If college is going to stand in for vocational school then it's a waste of time/effort/money to make those students take what amounts to academic fluff.

The problem is that until colleges acknowledge their vocational role every department will be pushing for every other department to require students to take a few of their classes on the basis that it is a requirement of a well rounded education (which is not the kind of education students in the more vocational programs are seeking).

It's not clear that even needs to be handled at the university level in that case, though. Community colleges already offer a range of vocational programs, with faster completion and much lower costs. This seems like purely some kind of prestige treadmill, where people really want a CC degree but employers demand a 4-year university degree, so we need to start offering 4-year university degrees that are CC degrees in disguise to bridge the gap. An alternate approach might be to convince people and employeers that a vocational CC degree is perfectly valid and respectable. But that's probably harder to do, so I don't really blame people for going this route, just seems not really ideal.