It also loses one of the main advantages of taking a college course while in high school, which is giving the student a taste of how college courses are run (requiring more self-motivation and time management on the part of the student, unlike the more supervised environment of high school) before they jump into college all at once as college frosh (while they are likely making other adjustments to how life changes from high school to college).
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This is how DE worked in my D’s private HS. There were only a few teachers who were certified to teach those classes, all had PhDs, and the syllabus mimicked the college class in terms of pace, structure for exams, and the final. My D took Spanish III, o chem I, and gov as DE courses (1 semester each). She had to submit the syllabus to Purdue for review and she was able to get college credit.
That seemed pretty common place in Ohio and the state schools were very generous with DE credit. My D and her classmates felt very well prepared for the rigors of college and for families with financial concerns, it saved quite a bit of money as it shaved off a full year of college, sometimes even two depending on major.
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FWIW, we’re starting to see more and more colleges that won’t transfer in DE credits unless they were taught on a college campus by college faculty (for clarification: community campuses count, as do adjunct faculty). It was the case for my C23 at the large regional public she’s going to, for example (and the DE credits she transferred in mean she’ll graduate in three years—but her classmates who had DE credits taught in their high schools got at most higher initial placement, no transfer credits).
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A page about the University of the Arts closure:
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I’m glad the school your D attended had qualified instructors with rigorous syllabi for its DE classes. I’m skeptical, however, that it’s the norm. Perhaps it’s the norm at the type of high schools that many CC-ers send their kids to?
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[quote=“AustenNut, post:1739, topic:1883690”]
The university’s leadership is betting on the premise that students would be happy with a steady diet of online courses, adjunct instructors, athletics, and social opportunities.
Gosh, maybe they should just go ahead and bet that students would be happy with a steady diet of just the athletics and social opportunities…
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My daughter has a new job as an instructor at a college in TN. They wanted her to travel to a hs or at least a classroom near the hs to teach a DE class. Daughter has a masters but not a PhD. This hs was about 45 minutes away from the college (and where my daughter lives) and there was no way for her to travel, teach, and return in an economical way to make the small amount they were willing to pay (it is twice a week, an hour there, an hour back, teach the class for 1.5 hours, and do the prep and grading). They usually find someone in the town the hs is located in but two of the teachers (don’t know if they were profs or adjunct) left the college this year so they are sort of desperate. I don’t think colleges have the manpower to staff hs DE classes.
Daughter is going to teach 2 courses on campus and one online for the college, but all local. Still isn’t a lot of money. She has another job (also low pay) and may have to get a third. She said sadly that third job, at Starbucks, may pay the most of all of them.
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I read the article, and I agree that an orderly closure makes more sense than what they are proposing. I honestly don’t see students wanting online courses and athletics as the draw for a college. It definitely seems like the board is out of touch with reality.
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Wow, what an article. Thanks for sharing it. Frankly, it’s mind blowing that this happened. Where was the board oversight? Where were the outside auditors? Where was the transparency? The board members were nothing short of negligent, IMO.
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I think this can vary some. Here in the northeast my kids had an amazing HS Western Civ teacher teach their DE class. She is the department head, certified by the college, and holds a bachelors and two masters from highly selective universities.
I am not a fan of DE for credits, simply because I think it is crazy that an adolescent at 16 can really absorb and perform in the same way an 18 or 19 year old student can. It also needs to kids bulking up in $&@# MIDDLE SCHOOL and having classes taken in 8th grade on their HS Transcript. And people wonder why there is a mental health crisis among young people. Take a couple classes for rigor (my kid transferred 2 and it helped put him ahead for class selection).
Sadly, I think a lot of people push DE for rigor (and that can vary, unlike AP, which has its own issues, but performance can be verified with the test) or to save $$ because college is ridiculously expensive. Either way, it’s a bit too much pressure.
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My son’s school has addressed the reduced revenue created by kids coming in with 15-30+ credits due to DE by charging “differential tuition” (a higher rate per credit) after your first 30 credits.
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University of Michigan charges higher tuition for upper division students:
https://ro.umich.edu/tuition-residency/tuition-fees?year=135&school=93&term_type=75&level=86
Note: University of Michigan defines “upper division” for tuition purposes as 55 (not 60) or more credits.
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That’s very widely done, though usually after the first ~60 credits (or whatever the equivalent is for half a degree), because it’s generally more expensive to deliver upper-division courses.
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At the time, D’s HS used DE to supplement where they didn’t have an AP class. I believe that has started to change though and they are offering more DE now and fewer AP.
Interesting data visualization on college sizes, which are often discussed here.
The full data are (probably behind a paywall) at https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-would-higher-ed-look-like-distilled-into-100-institutions?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_10740130_nl_Academe-Today_date_20240813.
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There is a paywall, but if you sign up for an account you get a (very) limited number of free articles a month. I think this was my first time signing in in a while and it said I have one other free article this month. I think it used to be four free articles a month.
Anyway, these were some of the data points that I found particularly interesting:
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18% for-profit
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39% 2-year colleges
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25% as special-focus institutions (mostly health professions or faith-related) and 7% would be something else (besides associates, master’s, baccalaureate, doctoral, or special-focus)
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25% in the Southeast
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35% of colleges are in three states (CA, NY, TX, FL, and PA)
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45% are open admission
As far as I’m concerned, we could eliminate all the for-profit colleges and I’d be happy. I had no clue that a fourth of colleges are considered special-focus ones. And it’s interesting that 1/4 of colleges are in the Southeast (the largest percentage in any one region) when it feels like 80% of the focus on CC is on schools in the northeast or California.
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Yes, the geographic distribution was a surprise to me, too. I wonder if it has to do with the categories you mentioned in the bullet above?
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The image shows that what that page defines as “Southeast” contains a large population, probably about 100 million, or about 30% of the US population. So having 25% of the colleges is fewer than expected if all regions had similar numbers of colleges per population.
Of course, the number of colleges per population could vary depending on the percentage of population in college and the size of the colleges.
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If I’m remembering my higher ed history class correctly, there was an arms race among protestant denominations (e.g., Methodist, Baptist) to establish as many college as possible during the 1800s. Since the Southeast + Mid East was most of the early U.S. it would make sense that many of those colleges would concentrate there.
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My S22 took a DE Pre-Calculus class. It had the curriculum that the Pre-Calc class at UW-Seattle used. The homework were graded by the teacher. The tests were provided by the UW-Seattle professor, administrated and graded by the HS teacher. The finals were provided by the UW-Seattle professor, administrated by the HS teacher, and graded by the UW-Seattle professor (or his TAs, more likely). It took a year of HS and granted 1 semester of UW-Seattle credit. (Not sure if it would have applied to other colleges as well…)
My C25 took a DE French class last year. The curriculum and HS teacher were approved by the local CC. I think it had the same 1 yr HS = 1 semester college, although we haven’t looked to closely at it. For the most part, C25 isn’t interested in Running Start (what the “take classes at the community college” stuff is called here), and mostly picks HS classes based on what they want for their college application, not necessarily in order to gain college credit before getting there. So, the DE aspect is “huh, more paperwork” rather than a draw for them.