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Dave Larsen writes about higher education.Home > Blogs > On Campus > Archives > 2008 > February > 06
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Strickland plan offers high school seniors free year of college
Eric Fingerhut
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland sent a message to Ohio high schools and public colleges and universities on Wednesday that they need to start working together to improve college readiness.
Building on an existing program that enables high school students to earn both high school and college credits simultaneously, Strickland unveiled a plan for high school seniors to complete the first year of college during their senior year on a University System of Ohio campus. Tuition would be free.
With a full year of college credit under their belts, the students would graduate high school and start college as sophomores.
Strickland shared the plan, called Seniors to Sophomores, in his state-of-the-state speech in Columbus as part of several initiatives for reforming Ohio’s educational pipeline. On the K-12 end, he proposed stripping power from the Ohio Board of Education to create more straight-line accountability. You can read about that at my colleague Scott Elliott’s K-12 blog, Get On the Bus.
“Its goal is to raise the aspirations of all students, to challenge students who might feel disengaged from their high school studies, and to help students who want to accelerate their college education,” Strickland said in the speech. “And, just think about the effect on a family’s budget when they save the cost of an entire year of college tuition.”
Students who meet the academic qualifications for the program would start enrolling this fall. Only students from Ohio’s public high schools will initially be eligible, and they can enroll only at public two- and four-year campuses in the University System of Ohio.
Under the existing Post Secondary Enrollment Options program, high school students can earn credits toward high school graduation through dual-enrollment in college courses.
Students currently also get free college tuition when dual-enrolled, but the system is not as flexible or accessible as the Governor would like, said Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut, who oversees the University System of Ohio.
In the past, schools discouraged the program because high schools and higher education institutions have struggled to work out sharing its costs and scheduling, often preventing students from taking full advantage of the option.
“The governor is very frustrated by the fact that we’ve allowed bureaucratic barriers between K-12 and higher education to impede what students want to do. Anyone who wants to do this should be able to,” Fingerhut said following the speech.
About 11,200 public high school and 1,000 non-public school students participated in the PSEO program in Fall 2007, according to Ohio Department of Education data.
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