Hector Torres wishes he had not waited so long to start college.
That’s not the weighty middle-aged regret of lost dreams. It’s the lament of an Indianapolis high school senior who waited until late into his sophomore year – Gasp! – to take advantage of the college classes Indiana offers high schoolers for free or little cost.
Indiana is one of the few states where starting college as a high school sophomore makes you a late bloomer. The state ranks just behind Idaho in leading an early college credit movement, as states increasingly encourage high school students to take college classes, most often at community colleges.
In Idaho and Indiana, high school students make up more than half the students in community college classes, according to a report issued this summer by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. Iowa and Montana follow, with high schoolers representing more than 40% of community college enrollment, and eight other states comprising more than 30% of enrollment.
On the other end, states such as Rhode Island and Connecticut haven’t joined the push, with high schoolers making up just 6% and 10% of community college students, respectively.
High school students have long been able to get a head start on college credits, traditionally by taking accelerated Advanced Placement classes and accompanying national Advanced Placement tests that started in the 1950s. Colleges then decide which credits to award based on the test scores. The College Board still offers 39 AP course guidelines and tests each year.
But earning early college credit has become more urgent the last few decades, as college costs have exploded and employers increasingly require study beyond high school. So states have seen dramatic increases in “early college,” “dual enrollment” or “dual credit” where high school students take classes on college campuses or high school teachers offer college classes.
Those approaches have allowed the number of high school students earning college credit to more than double since 2011 to 1.5 million a year, according to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. About 75% are enrolled in community colleges and the rest in four-year schools. Columbia researchers also estimate that more than a third of high schoolers take at least one college class before graduating.
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“The pitch to communities and families and students is…get your first year of college out of the way in high school, or get it done in high school,” said researcher John Fink. “That’s a very compelling affordability pitch to students and families and obviously that’s an important issue on everybody’s mind.”
In a state as aggressive as Indiana, it’s normal for students like Torres, a student at l Believe Circle City High School, to be taking quantitative reasoning at Ivy Tech Community College this fall after taking psychology and introduction to criminology as a junior.
“I was kind of just in trouble all the time,” Torres said of himself as a freshman. “I didn’t really care about school stuff. It wasn’t until last year where I started actually doing my work and decided to take dual enrollment seriously.”
“Now I’m kind of trying to rush things,” said Torres, who wants to earn a degree before starting a career as a police officer. “I kind of wish I started early when they had given me the opportunity.”
Fink and other Columbia researchers reported in October that students taking college classes early are more likely to enroll in college right after high school and are more likely to earn technical certificates, associates and bachelors degrees.
Taking classes directly through a college allows students to receive credits automatically, which is often more attractive to students than AP classes that rely on test scores to turn into credits, said Julie Edmunds, director of the Early College Resource Center at the University of North Carolina -Greensboro.
“When all the college credit relies on passing a single exam on a single day, there are students who aren’t going to be successful in that kind of environment, and the proportion of AP takers that actually receive credit is much lower,” Edmunds said.
Other factors make taking college classes attractive to some students, including letting students intimidated by college test it out or colleges offering classes like advanced physics or foreign languages that their high schools can’t provide.
Still, though almost all states allow high schoolers to take college classes, there’s no consensus on how much to encourage and how to pay for it. A 2022 report by the Education Commission of the States found a 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 meet a college’s entrance requirements first, the study found, while others do not. Nineteen states required students to have a recommendation from a school official, while others require students to pass tests or just let students decide on their own.
States also differ on which community college classes automatically count toward four-year degrees.
And states are divided on who pays for early credits, the study found, with states like Alabama and South Carolina requiring high school students to pay full tuition rates and states like Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington, D.C. covering the entire cost of the classes.
The Idaho State Board of Education attributes its high rate of community college enrollment on the state’s Advanced Opportunities program, which gives students up to $4,625 to pay for college classes.
And there are big differences too between students who just enroll in some college classes and those in so-called “early college high schools,” where college credit is prioritized and schools offer more specialized counseling and specific courses to help students succeed.
“If you’re expanding access to college,you can’t just throw everybody in college courses without giving them some level of support,” Edmunds said.
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In Indiana, where officials boast of being a national leader in early credits, having one single community college, Ivy Tech, with 45 campuses around the state under one umbrella, makes coordinating between schools easier.
The state also made course credits more valuable starting in 2013 by creating the Indiana College Core, a collection of 30 college credits – some math, some English, some science, some social studies – guaranteed to transfer to any public institution in the state. That lets students know classes they take in high school will count at any public, and some private, school they choose.
The state also encourages high schools to offer classes in that core to students, so that some will complete it by graduation.
Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said high schools slowly started making these classes available, with 84 of about 500 offering it three years ago. He said he and state education superintendent Katie Jenner, have pressed other schools to add it, growing that number to 275.
That often means having teachers like Brooklyn Raines, an English teacher at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, teach Ivy Tech classes at the school. Though an employee of Indianapolis Public Schools, Raines had to apply to Ivy Tech as an instructor, attend early college training over the summer and have her curriculum for Introduction to Creative Writing approved by the community college’s English department.
She now teaches that class at Crispus Attucks three days a week on behalf of Ivy Tech. Though there can be worries that college level work is too much for high school students who are younger and haven’t learned as much as older students, Raines said her students are capable.
“Despite the stigma that they aren’t traditional college students, so they can’t retain the information, or they can’t keep up with the information, they prove time and time and 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 that has her debating whether to continue on a political science path or follow a previous interest in neuroscience.
Kpotufe, who has already earned an associates degree in general studies, said the Ivy Tech classes could cut her costs for her bachelors degree nearly in half.
“It would definitely take a lot of money off,” she said. “That’s why I think Ivy Tech is a really good opportunity for people, especially if you want to stay in state.”