Hector Torres wishes he hadn’t waited so long to go to college.
That’s not the heavy regret of lost dreams in middle age. It’s the lament of an Indianapolis high school student who waited until late in his sophomore year: Gasp! – to take advantage of the college classes Indiana offers free or low-cost to high school students.
Indiana is one of the few states where starting college as a sophomore makes you a late bloomer. The state is just behind Idaho in leading an early student loan movement, as states increasingly encourage high school students to take college classes, mostly at community colleges.
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In Idaho and Indiana, high school students make up more than half of students in community college classes, according to a report released this summer by Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. Iowa and Montana follow, with high school students accounting for more than 40% of community college enrollment, and eight other states accounting for more than 30% of enrollment.
On the other hand, states like Rhode Island and Connecticut have not joined the effort, with high school students making up just 6% and 10% of community college students, respectively.
Columbia University conducted a study in August on high school enrollment rates at community colleges. Idaho and Indiana stand out, with more than half of the community’s students still in high school. Map by Columbia University Community College Research Center.
High school students have long been able to get a head start in college credits, traditionally by taking accelerated Advanced Placement classes and taking the corresponding national Advanced Placement tests that began in the 1950s. Colleges then decide which credits to award based on test scores. The College Board still offers 39 AP course guidelines and tests each year.
But earning college credit early has become more urgent in recent decades as college costs have exploded and employers increasingly require college beyond high school. Thus, states have seen a dramatic increase in “early college,” “dual enrollment” or “dual credit,” in which high school students take classes on college campuses or high school teachers offer college classes.
Thanks to this approach, the number of high school students earning college credits has more than doubled to 1.5 million annually since 2011, according to Columbia University’s Early College Research Center. About 75% attend community colleges and the rest attend four-year schools. Columbia researchers also estimate that more than a third of high school students take at least one class before graduating.
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“The message to communities, families and students is… make sure you skip your freshman year of high school, or make sure you finish it in high school,” said Columbia professor John Fink. “That’s a very compelling pricing proposition for students and families, and that’s obviously an important topic on everyone’s mind.”
In a state as aggressive as Indiana, it’s only natural that students like Torres, a student at Believe Circle City High School, will take quantitative reasoning at Ivy Tech Community College this fall after studying psychology as a junior and an introductory in criminology.
High school senior Hector Torres has already taken several classes at Ivy Tech Community College, but wishes he had started sooner. (Patrick O’Donnell)
“I was in trouble all the time,” Torres said of himself as a freshman. “I didn’t care much about school matters. It wasn’t until last year that I actually started doing my work and decided to take dual enrollment seriously.”
“Now I’m trying to rush things a little bit,” said Torres, who wants to get a degree before starting a career as a police officer. “I kind of wish I had started early when they gave me the chance.”
Fink and other Columbia researchers reported in October that students who attend college early are more likely to enroll in college right after high school and are more likely to earn technical certificates, associates and bachelor’s degrees.
Taking classes directly through a college allows students to receive college credit automatically, which is often more attractive to students than AP classes that rely on test scores to convert college credits, says Julie Edmunds, director of the University’s Early College Resource Center of North Carolina. -Greensboro.
“If all tuition is dependent on passing a single exam on a single day, there are students who will not be successful in such an environment, and the number of AP students who actually receive college credit is much lower,” says Edmunds. said.
Other factors make taking college classes attractive to some students, such as letting students who are intimidated by college try it out or colleges offering classes such as advanced physics or foreign languages that their high school cannot offer.
However, while almost all states allow high school students to take college classes, there is no consensus on how much to encourage them and how to pay for them. A 2022 report from the Education Commission of the States found wide variation in the training teachers need to teach college classes, which students can take them and who pays for them.
Twenty-six states required high school students to first meet college admissions requirements, the study found, while others did not. Nineteen states required students to receive a recommendation from a school official, while other states required students to take exams or let students decide for themselves.
States also differ on which community college classes automatically count toward a four-year degree.
And states are split over who pays for early college credits, the study found, with states like Alabama and South Carolina requiring high school students to pay full tuition and states like Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington, D.C. which cover the full cost of the lessons.
The Idaho State Board of Education attributes high community college enrollment to the state’s Advanced Opportunities program, which gives students up to $4,625 to pay for their college tuition.
And there are also big differences between students who simply enroll in some college classes and students at so-called “early college high schools,” where credits are prioritized and schools offer more specialized guidance and specific courses to help students succeed.
“When you expand access to college, you can’t just send everyone to college without giving them some kind of support,” Edmunds said.
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In Indiana, where officials pride themselves on being a national leader in early credits, having one community college, Ivy Tech, with 45 campuses across the state under one umbrella makes coordination between schools easier.
The state also made college credits more valuable starting in 2013 by creating the Indiana College Core, a collection of thirty credits—some math, some English, some science, some social studies—that are guaranteed to be transferable to any public institution in the state. This lets students know that the classes they take in high school will count at any public and some private schools they choose.
The state also encourages high schools to offer classes in that core to students so that some will complete them by graduating.
Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Chris Lowery said high schools were slowly making these classes available, with 84 of about 500 offering them three years ago. He said he and state education Superintendent Katie Jenner pushed other schools to add it, growing that number to 275.
That often means teachers like Brooklyn Raines, an English teacher at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, teach Ivy Tech classes at the school. Although Raines was an employee of the Indianapolis Public Schools, she had to register at Ivy Tech as an instructor, take early college training over the summer, and have her Introduction to Creative Writing curriculum approved by the community college’s English department.
She now teaches that class three days a week at Crispus Attucks on behalf of Ivy Tech. While there may be concerns that working at the college level is too much for high school students who are younger and have not learned as much as older students, Raines said her students are capable.
“Despite the stigma that they are not traditional students and therefore cannot remember the information or keep up with the information, they prove time and time again that they can,” Raines said.
Other times, students take Ivy Tech classes online. That’s how Layla Kpotufe, a fellow senior at the same high school as Torres, took a world politics class last year in which she wondered whether to continue down the path of political science or follow a previous interest in neuroscience.
Kpotufe, who already has an associate degree in general studies, said the Ivy Tech classes could nearly halve her cost of her bachelor’s degree.
“It would definitely cost a lot of money,” she said. “That’s why I think Ivy Tech is a really good opportunity for people, especially if you want to stay in the state.”
