Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
Dual enrollment — college classes for high school students — boosts college-going and graduation rates only if students take rigorous classes on a college campus, a study finds. There are no gains for marginal students.
Also on Community College Spotlight: More degrees for the dollar?
And, for-profit students are less likely to be working and earn less than similar students who enrolled at a public or private nonprofit college, suggests a new study.
Florida’s dual-enrollment students are double dipping, analysts complain. After earning a tuition-free associate degree in high school, students use state scholarships to fund three or four years at the University of Florida. Only six percent complete a bachelor’s degree in two years.
Also on Community College Spotlight: A Mississippi college will offer a military tech degree for veterans and active-duty soldiers.
Many more high school students are earning college credits through dual-enrollment programs, but some colleges question whether they’re truly doing college-level work. More colleges also are refusing to give credit to students who’ve passed AP exams.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Fewer California community college students are transferring to the California State system, while more are choosing private and out-of-state colleges and universities. That’s much more expensive, but not if students factor in the time it will take to get the courses they need and complete a degree.
Indiana will encourage students to skip senior year and go straight to college, the Hechinger Report notes. Under Gov. Mitch Daniels’ plan, high school students who complete their core requirements by the end of their junior year can go straight to college with a scholarship based on how much money the state would have spent — $6,000 to $8,000 for most — on their 12th-grade education.
Daniels said he came up with the idea after years of asking seniors he met across the state what they were up to and too often being told “not much.”
“I kept bumping into seniors who said, ‘Well, I’m done,’ ” he said. “They’d laugh and tell me they were having a good time. We are spending thousands of dollars on students who are eligible to move on.”
Senior year is a time for “drift and disconnection,” concludes the National Commission on the High School Senior Year.
Solutions over the past decade have trended toward mixing college and high school courses through dual-enrollment programs or early-college high schools, where students can earn an associate degree and a diploma.
But Daniels’ preferred strategy — shortening high school altogether — also is catching on.
In Idaho, 21 districts will give early-graduation scholarships. Kentucky is thinking about it. In the fall, eight states will begin a program that lets students test out of the last two years of high school and go directly to community college. The National Center on Education and the Economy and the Gates Foundation are backing the idea.
One of my best friends in high school left after 11th grade for college. She was impatient to get on with it. (She dropped out after a year to organize the proletariat for the revolution.)
My daughter’s half-sister skipped high school entirely. Now 18, she will earn a bachelor’s in classics, summa cum laude, on Saturday from the University of Santa Clara and go on to Berkeley for her PhD. It was a challenge to buy her a graduation card. Nothing seemed to fit quite right.
Update: Ed Next looks at high school students who attend college part-time.
College classes for low-achieving 11th graders? It’s a hot idea, writes Community College Dean. And a bad one.
Also on Community College Spotlight: First, he earned an associate degree. Next he’ll graduate from high school.
Community colleges can learn from for-profit schools, writes an instructor who’s taught in both sectors.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Billed as a motivator for struggling high school students, Colorado’s dual-enrollment program attracts college-ready students who want to save money.
This year’s valedictorian at Etowah High School in Georgia never has attended the school. Kelly McCahill is on the class list at Etowah but attends the University of West Georgia as a dual-enrollment student. Her college grades count for more points than the straight A’s earned by Sydney Perlotto, who’s ranked first in her class since ninth grade.
At Etowah, Perlotto’s classmates have aired their protests on a Facebook page they’ve labeled “Team Sydney.” They’ve also circulated a petition, asking that county policy declare the school’s valedictorian and salutatorian be required to attend the school for some period between their freshman and senior years.
That does seem fair. McCahill’s enrollment isn’t really dual: She’s a full-time, residential student at UWG with only a nominal link to Etowah High.
On Community College Spotlight: Bright ideas, like “learning communities” and dual-enrollment classes, are making college feel like high school, writes a dean. Students don’t like it.
At a California community college, remedial students — organized in a learning community — are reading and writing about vampire lit, starting with the Twilight books and moving on to Dracula.
On Community College Spotlight: As college tuition continues to rise, cost-cutting ideas include starting more students at community college, eliminating tenure and pushing three-year bachelor’s degrees and dual-enrollment high school classes. But taxpayers won’t save money by shifting students to community college, a new study concludes. The average four-year college spends less on lower-division students than community colleges spend.
In Kaplan faces scrutiny, the New York Times takes on the Washington Post’s very profitable for-profit higher education company.
“I’ve earned my way to the top,” says Rita Romero, a former jewelry designer who was certified as a utility lineman by Los Angeles Trade Technical College, which offered an all-female class. Linemen — and linewomen — start at $30 an hour in Southern California.
Also, thanks to Colorado’s dual enrollment law, a ninth grader can take a college class in anthropology.
It’s all on Community College Spotlight.
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