By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
As high school graduates step across the stage to receive their diplomas, more and more of them will be taking college credits with them.
This is the end of the second year of the state’s College Credit Plus a program that allows students as young as seventh grade to earn college credit. The program replaced the Post-Secondary Options Program. Pushed by Gov. John Kasich, College Credit Plus greatly expanded the options, and required school districts to make the program available.
Students can take courses in their home school taught by credentialed high school teachers as well as going to campus. They can also take online classes.
And more and more students are availing themselves of the opportunity, said John Fischer, vice provost for strategic enrollment planning at Bowling Green State University. He expects that as many as a third of students who enroll in BGSU next fall will bring some college credits with them.
Fischer has been the lead administrator overseeing BGSU’s participation in College Credit Plus.
In the past school year almost 1,900 students were enrolled in at least one College Credit Plus course at BGSU, either on the Bowling Green or Firelands campus.
More than half are seniors with juniors accounting for another 700 or so. The numbers by grade drop off from there – 175 sophomores, 41 freshmen, 13 eighth graders and four seventh graders.
About 300 take their courses on the BG campus or online with 685 taking classes at high school sites under the aegis of the main campus
“From an enrollment perspective it is robust and incredibly strong,” Fischer said. .He expects even more growth next year. Next year he expects enrollment at the main and Firelands campuses to top 3,000.
“When I talk to parent of high school students and when I hear data coming out of the state this is helping kids get a head start on college and clearly saving them money,” he said. “As long as we’re doing our jobs right, it’s a good thing.
“When I listen to the governor and listen to my colleagues in the Ohio Department of Higher Education,” he said, “they will argue this is a big win .If it grows the number of high school students considering going to college, it’s a big win. If teachers have more credentials, it’s a win. If it saves people money, it’s a win.”
Fischer added if it means seniors in high school, who now may have met all or most of their graduation requirements, have an incentive to take more rigorous course work and stay engaged, that’s also a win.
“It does come with consequences and dangers,” Fischer said.
Those are both academic for students and financial for institutions.
“Students being unaware of consequence of grades is the thing that haunts me the most,” Fischer said.
Grades earned in College Credit Plus courses do follow a student throughout their careers. “It does go on your permanent record.” He said the university does a lot of outreach to counselors, parents and students to get the message across.
An F on a College Credit Plus course “really hurts you.”
And it’s not only failing grades that sting. Get a B, and your shot at a perfect 4.0 grade average is gone before you even step foot on campus.
“If you are a nursing student at BGSU,” Fischer said, “and you have a C in biology, you’ve just about ended your nursing program. I’m always worried that a student doesn’t understand the impact of a grade that’s perceived as an OK grade.”
Those credits earned must be accepted by state institutions, but private institutions don’t have to, and more are opting not to, said Sara Kilpatrick, Ohio Conference executive director of the American Association of University Professors, earlier this year.
Fischer said the other concern is that what a student decides to take in high school may not line up with what they need for a major they decide to pursue.
Bowling Green High School Principal Jeff Dever has another concern – inflated grade point averages. The state says that if a department offers weighted grades, any college course a student takes should be weighted. That means instead of getting 4.0 for an A, the student gets a 5.0.
So a student who takes the basic General Studies Writing course that lasts a semester, or half the high school year, gets the same grade as someone who takes AP English, a more challenging year-long course.
Some students’ high GPAs do not properly reflect a student’s readiness for college, he said.
Kilpatrick said studies showed the College Credit Plus students taking these courses within their high schools were getting higher grades than their peers taking the same course in a college setting.
The BG High offers seven college credit plus courses with general studies writing the most popular, but also French and Spanish courses.
About 80 individual students are enrolled in one or more of those courses.
In order to enroll in a program, a student must have the qualifications, aside from a high school diploma, to be accepted as a regular student at the college or university. Many institutions in the state, however, have open enrollment. Next year, Fischer said, students will have to take one of three tests to show they are ready for college.
Superintendent Francis Scruci said the district is glad to offer the option. “It’s something we want to provide.” But “like most of these mandates, we don’t get any funding.”
Instead the district is required to pay for the courses.
Fischer said the money comes to the university “at a rate significantly less than the tuition rate for a comparably enrolled student at the university.”
College Credit Plus students are “bringing in way, way less.” That might not be enough to even cover the cost of a class such as biology that’s expensive to offer, he said.
How much a deficit this causes, Fischer said, is “a complicated puzzle to tease out.”
It’s uncertain how much students avail themselves of services such as the university library, tutoring in the Learning Commons, and the student recreation center. They can use these services, but don’t pay the student fee that supports some of them.
Some private institutions, Kilpatrick of the AAUP said, are deciding to opt out of offering courses because the compensation is so poor.
The situation for two-year schools can be more critical. Firelands, for example, has always had strong program for high school students dating back to the post-secondary options days. The number of such students “is high, it’s always been high,” Fischer said.
In some community colleges, high school students are reaching 60 percent of the student body.
“If the growth continues, the state will have to make a decision how we’re going to keep providing the services without tuition behind it,” he said.
Also, with so many students taking the basic courses in high school that were the hallmark of community colleges, it calls into question what their mission becomes. This could “change the face of community colleges and regional campuses,” Kilpatrick of the AAUP said.
She also brought up concerns about the way the courses are taught. Half the courses offered in high schools across the state are taught by high school teachers.
Teaching high school courses, she said, is different than teaching in college. University faculty are not qualified to teach high school courses, so why would the reverse be true?
High school teachers work very hard, Fischer said. And they would argue their junior English composition classes can be as rigorous as a college writing course.
Still “the whole context and structure of a high school class is different than a college class,” Fischer said. A college professor takes more the role of facilitator as opposed to “the much more intrusive intervention in high school.”
What colleges require of teachers varies across the state, he said.
The state did provide BGSU funding train teachers. Currently 100 teachers are studying at BGSU to earn the credential to teach College Credit Plus courses.
BGSU has gone further than the state mandates. “Everyone wanted to make sure we were building a model that is collaborative and focused and guarantees the rigor at the high school is as good as what is happening on the main and Firelands campuses,” Fischer said.
BGSU requires a teacher have the same qualifications needed to be hired as an adjunct professor in order to be placed in a College Credit Plus classroom.
That includes not only classwork to help the teacher earn a subject master’s degree or other credential, it also includes having a faculty mentor who works closely with the teacher.
“The feedback we’re getting from teachers working with Bowling Green is that the mentoring program matters. The feedback is really, really strong. … It’s not in the state law, it’s a choice we made as an institution.”
Other institutions have made other choices. “Everybody has their own model,” Fischer said. “Most of them don’t have professional development. … People can’t assume College Credit Plus means the same thing in every place.
“The state has gone with the minimums,” he said. “I don’t think the minimums are enough.”
