Student success should be the paramount goal for administrators in colleges across the country.

In last Thursday’s State of Education Address, held by the Cerritos College Student Success Committee, prerequisites were hailed as the biggest contributor to student success at Cerritos.

Students may cringe at the thought of being forced to take classes before higher-level courses because that usually leads to another semester added before you transfer or achieve a degree.

However, the statistics presented last week showed that prerequisites increase the success rates in the less than 20 classes that require them on campus.

With about 720 classes still without prerequisites, it would be in the school’s best interest to require more classes before allowing students to enroll in classes with low success rates.

Students want more classes, but prerequisites may not have been what we envisioned.

If you’ve ever attended a class without a prerequisite and felt lost or overworked, you may understand first hand how these types of courses may help introduce the groundwork to success.

Prerequisites as they exist now, primarily help students with mathematics, English and reading.

These are not the only courses that may present challenges for students; on the contrary, we have these courses in high school.

Some higher education courses have few accompanying courses within high school districts and special attention to prerequisites may aid success for students taking these courses.

Individual student engagement and teaching practices will also help students succeed, but the most controllable factor for administrators is creating more classes designed to help us in the first place.

So when you log on to your MyCerritos account only to find more prerequisites soliciting your enrollment, think of them as blessings, not curses, from our administrators.