Remedial college courses generate tuition and fit neatly into existing course structures. But they often fail to deliver access and success in foundational “gateway” undergraduate courses. Because under-represented minorities are over-represented in these courses, remedial courses obstruct equitable access and success. Schools are increasingly turning instead to supplemental instruction and Internet-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs). But these alternatives don't generate tuition, are difficult to evaluate, and can require substantial infrastructure. This study compared 2561 students who qualified for Principles of Chemistry and Biochemistry by passing Developmental Chemistry with 607 students who qualified by completing a commercial Internet-based ITS. Propensity-score techniques were used to control for biased selection and assignment. We found that spending approximately 30 h on a $30 ITS was equally as effective as spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of tuition on a three or five credit remedial course in terms of final grades in Principles for the entire population as well as for under-represented minorities. This finding has implications for advising students and for designing and evaluating programs for underprepared students and under-represented minorities.

补习性大学课程会产生学费，并使其与现有课程结构完全相称。但是，他们通常无法在基础的“门户”本科课程中提供访问和成功的机会。由于在这些课程中代表性不足的少数民族人数过多，因此补习课程阻碍了公平的机会和成功。学校越来越多地转向补充教学和基于Internet的智能辅导系统（ITS）。但是这些替代方法不会产生学费，难以评估，并且可能需要大量的基础架构。本研究比较了2561名通过发展性化学课程并符合化学和生物化学原理的学生共有607名学生完成了基于互联网的商业ITS的学习。倾向得分技术用于控制偏向选择和分配。我们发现，就《原则》的最终成绩而言，在30美元的ITS上花费大约30小时与在三到五个学分补救课程上花费数百小时和数千美元的学费同样有效，这对整个人群以及-少数民族。这一发现对于为学生提供咨询以及为缺乏准备的学生和代表性不足的少数民族设计和评估课程具有重要意义。