Why should the full pay college kid need to spend an extra semester in college to get the credits needed for a BA because the local HS is shoving its kids onto the college campus- and not paying for them?
Totally not understanding the problem here. Kid is a genius- got that. Has run out of HS classes to take- got that. Parent doesn’t want kid to graduate early and start college? Why not? Parent doesn’t want to pay for kid to enroll in an online university class- why not? Parent doesn’t want to pay for kid to take a class at a local university- why not?
Parent thinks his/her kids college education should be free/cheap- terrific- we can advise parent on a group of colleges where the genius kid can do exactly that!
Reply to alh - Sure. My kid is not world changing genius. What as a parent i would like to do is give an opportunity. We all understand the concept of team work. That is the reason I am posting here. If we do not believe that “we can make the system better”, the system is not going to improve.
It seems that even with about 200K in income what you really want is for other people to pay for your child to take college classes. You can pay for the classes, or you can use free online resources, or your child can simply read math books. I actually know quite a few people who were very advanced in their math education, more so than your child, and what they have in common is that they would read math textbooks and learn on their own. Back then there was no internet.
Answer to mathyone-
“I highly doubt that the high school kids going to a cc to take multivariable calculus are teaching their professors. At least I hope not.”
The question is not about teaching. It is about learning. When there are tons of resources available, kids are learning from everywhere. This is about paying only to one source whereas the learning is happening from many sources.
nmc2015: I like to think all kids have potential for world changing genius and never have told a kid otherwise. And I would like to see every kid’s potential maximized. I support the idea of free college. I agree it would be good for the country. We can’t talk politics on this board. It isn’t allowed, in case you didn’t understand that yet.
I would be the first to agree that the US educational system is not supportive enough of gifted students. The issue of paying for college classes is small in comparison to everything else that is happening–or not happening-- in the first 13 years.
Who would pay for the class? The college would let the kid in for free? Are you suggesting the HS should pay? Why is your kid running out of HS math classes and why not just take other subjects instead? Why shouldn’t you pay like everyone else?
I understand that there are kids, few and far between, who learn so quickly that they get bored in school, especially if they are not in a competitive HS. If you kid is so far ahead, perhaps in this particular case the college would allow him to audit a class. But as others said in the other thread on this, it can be very difficult to get the child to college campus and the workload may be too much. There are other options, like online classes, or simply taking other challenging subjects in HS or switching to part-time HS and early college.
I don’t think college should allow HS students to attend for free as that will just shift the bar even higher and increase tuition burden on college kids: the top students will be expected to commute to college if there is a college within a reasonable distance. That is not good for anyone. There is much to learn out there, and not having math for a year if your kid has maxed out the classes, is not going to cause him problems in the 22nd century.
If your son’s GPA isn’t strong enough to get a merit scholarship, maybe you should consider having him concentrate on his current high school classes instead of enrolling him in as many high level college math courses as you can find. Or you can continue what you’re doing and pay your EFC for whatever college he decides to attend. Your only other option is to change your focus to schools your son can get admitted to that fall within the budget range you set (note: it won’t be free) even if that means he’s not going to be attending a top ~20 school. Most students don’t and they survive just fine.
"What as a parent i would like to do is give an opportunity. "
Well, no. You only care about trying to get a free opportunity for YOUR kid. People who really care about opportunity care about all the kids, not merely the advanced ones.
But there ARE free college opportunities for strong students. The handful of kids in my community who have attended one of the service academies- exceptional young leaders and scholars. One is now in medical school, paid for by all of us (the taxpayers) and trust me- worth every dime. I am happy to have my tax dollars pay for brave and committed young people who want to defend our country in exchange for a free college education.
Pay for every HS kid in America who wants to take a seat at college away from an actual college student? Not so interested right now.
With regard to tuition for students who are enrolled in college classes while still in high school: In our state, the local school district must contribute toward the tuition for these students, if they have completed all of the courses that the high school offers in a given area. In our district, the payment is not enough to cover the entire tuition cost (it is pro-rated based on the per student funding, and the fraction of classes that are taken at a college), but it is a substantial fraction of the tuition. You might look into the arrangements in your district, if you have not done that already.
This is one of the strangest threads I’ve ever read on CC.
There are lots of options for gifted students who’ve moved past their high schools’ “limited” offerings: Full-need-met, rigorous college preparatory schools (both day and boarding); graduating early and heading to college; online courses; homeschooling; self-teaching via a book, etc.
OP, let’s stop beating around the bush. Give us your student’s stats, and we’ll try to make recommendations for where he can attend college for relatively little money, including schools that are so generous with AP credits, he can likely start as an upperclassman if he’s as accomplished as you imply.
Some states have programs that allow high school students to take college classes without paying tuition (for example, I’m in Ohio and we have College Credit Plus). In addition to most state schools, several private universities participate in the program.
Can you clarify, is the question you are asking: "Is there a way for my HS student to take more advanced college classes without having to pay college tuition?
Depending on your community, it might be possible for your child to take community college courses, either in person or on line as a dual enrollment student.
If that is not available, there may be HS on-line options for more advanced classes through your school district.
Otherwise, you would have to pay.
If you are asking about colleges that offer merit-based scholarships, that’s a different question, for which more information is needed like your child’s GPA, class rank, test scores, etc.
Well in our area high school students can take dual enrollment classes in junior and senior year. They can choose several universities to take the classes at. These institutions give a tuition discount for dual enrollment classes, but they are not free.
There used to be a state funded program that helped pay for DE courses for low income students, but it has been discontinued several years ago.
We paid for one DE class for my D because the HS did not offer a particular AP class. It was not a waste of money because she can use the college credit from that class at her current college.
Let me start by saying that no student should ever dual enroll in a jr. college unless absolutely necessary. The quality of instruction is likely to be far less than in a high school AP or honors class. Dual enrollment should be taken through a four-year college.
With that said, some states do allow qualified students to take dual enrollment classes for free; others provide partial scholarships. My son has dual enrolled at Ole Miss and they have given him a 50 percent tuition scholarship, which they provide to all high school students. It’s still expensive, since a three-hour course costs about $800 (by comparison, a semester’s tuition for up to 21 hours cost $500 when I was in school). So after the scholarship the three-hour course is $400. My son’s ACT is now high enough that he would qualify for a tuition waiver if enrolled full time, so it will be interesting if that will have any effect on this dual enrollment.
There are countries which offer/offered free or exceedingly nominal cost college for all students provided they qualified for admission. Some public colleges in the US offered the same as recently as 40 years ago.
However, the trade-off is that such countries academically tracked students from middle school onwards and academic track students who were on the college track tended to be selected from the top 20-50% of their middle school graduates via examinations and/or academic assessments by teachers/educational admins.
In such societies, your student who is above 80-85% in an educational system where the vast majority goes to high schools which lead to college are likely to end up being barely above average or worse…average/below average among academic track students in societies which select out the academically bottom 50-80% of middle school grads before high school. From that vantage point, they wouldn’t be considered so impressive.
And we’re not even getting to the issue of whether all of the remaining top 20-50% of those middle school grads who qualified for academic-track high schools will actually qualify for admission to colleges in such societies…