Resistance or Reception: Understanding the Patterns of Corequisite Implementation Across the Nevada System of Higher Education

• In Event: Corequisite Mathematics Reform in Practice: Faculty Roles, Curricular Change, and Student Experience Across States

Abstract

For students who are academically under-prepared to succeed in college-level classes, the corequisite model of postsecondary remediation has become a popular reform to enhance college participation and completion nationwide (Jaggars & Bickerstaff, 2018). In the traditional prerequisite model, students are consigned to non-credit bearing English or math coursework based on placement criteria. Yet the prerequisite intervention does not necessarily improve student achievement, and in many cases may even harm students in their academic progress (Valentine et al., 2017). In contrast, a corequisite model enables underprepared students to enroll in college-level coursework by also taking concurrent support sections. Given corequisite impacts are comparably favorable to prerequisite outcomes, a trend within higher education has been to replace traditional with corequisite remediation (Daugherty et al., 2018). Today, corequisites are recommended or required in over 29 states (Whinnery et al., 2025).
Yet despite the corequisite model’s academic benefits and rapid expansion, qualitative studies report that everyday implementation decisions tend to be shaped by a lack of stakeholder buy-in (Daugherty et al., 2018; Schudde et al., 2025). This work implies that how individuals perceive the corequisite mandate guides their commitment to compliance. To complement these findings, using an embedded case study design, we explore compliance from a system-level perspective.
The empiricism focuses on the process of revamping remediation in Nevada, where the prerequisite model had been in place for 14 years prior to adopting a corequisite mandate in 2021 (Board of Regents, 2007, 2019). The Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) represents an extreme system sample insofar as it has one of the lowest bachelor’s degree attainment rates, and one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation. While early evaluations of the policy are showing positive effects (Ngo et al., 2025), the change process itself has been polarizing, creating friction not just between system leaders and campus stakeholders, but within and across the seven institutions.
Based on results of a practitioner survey and the first wave of interviews, this paper considers the implementation experiences of faculty and administrators through the lens of adaptive implementation (Kezar, 2022). This framework assumes not only that campuses will adapt a system-level mandate to fit their own identities, but also that the adaptive process itself can emulate resistance to the perceived threat of a one‑size‑fits‑all policy to local norms and priorities.
Preliminary findings are twofold. First, campus-based stakeholders attributed their implementation difficulties to the poor planning of NSHE leadership. Each campus perceived the policy mandate was incompatible with the needs of their students, whom they also described as unique compared to other NSHE students. Yet despite the perceived disadvantage that the mandate imposed, participants used ingenuity to balance system compliance with community loyalty. The paper concludes with a discussion of research-based opportunities for state systems and institutions to help guide the productivity of adaptive implementation.

Authors

• Stefani Relles, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Ariana Lucia Garcia, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Federick Ngo, University of Nevada - Las Vegas