INDIANAPOLIS — Shelby Coffelt started high school not knowing how she’d pay for college to become an engineer.
Growing up in rural Indiana, the oldest of four children worried about sinking herself or her parents into debt.
“I just knew it would cost it a lot,” said Coffelt. “I didn’t know how I was going to get the money.”
She’s now a junior in high school and almost halfway to earning an associate's degree in industrial technology from Ivy Tech Community College that isn't costing her a nickel.
Ahead of her lies a "work-share" opportunity with a major manufacturer that could lead to more money to help pay for that engineering degree.
Coffelt is the beneficiary of an idea that President Barack Obama came to Indiana last week to promote: free tuition for students to use community college as a path to a high-skilled job or higher degree.
Ivy Tech already offers several such programs for a limited number of students, and one legislator wants to extend the opportunity to even more.
Last year, Ivy Tech’s Kokomo campus received $3.7 million in federal money to expand its career training programs by offering students like Coffelt the chance to earn a free, two-year degree while still in high school.
Coffelt said she feels lucky to have been accepted into the Integrated Technology Education Program. She’s one of 20 students — and the only girl — in the program at the Heartland Career Center at Southwood High School in the small city of Wabash.
“It’s pretty hard some days,” she said.
Ivy Tech President Tom Snyder says Indiana is already on its way to realizing the vision that Obama first described in January's State of the Union speech, then expanded upon at Ivy Tech's central campus in Indianapolis on Friday.
About 50,000 Indiana high school students are enrolled in “dual credit” classes and earn college credits from Ivy Tech or another of the state’s universities, at no or little cost to the students.
More state and federal dollars are being directed into expanding those opportunities.
“That’s a big step in the pathway to free college tuition,” Snyder said.
Coffelt wishes she could have been part of the president’s town hall-style meeting with Ivy Tech students. She would have liked to tell him about her program.
Marlene Aguilar is an Ivy Tech student who did get to be there. She sat behind Obama and shook his hand.
The 18-year-old is enrolled in Ivy Tech’s Associate Accelerated Program, known as ASAP. By going to school all day, every weekday, she’ll earn enough college credits in 12 months to knock two years off the four-year degree she wants.
If she succeeds, it’ll be another milestone for her family: Aguilar was the first in her family to graduate from high school.
It’s not been easy for Aguilar, either. She spends her days in class and her evenings working at her father’s small grocery store to scrape together tuition.
Of 80 students who first enrolled with her, about half have left the fast-paced program.
State Rep. Terri Austin says Indiana needs both Coffelt and Aguilar to succeed. The state ranks 45th for residents with college degrees — a detriment to attracting high-skilled, high-paying jobs.
Austin, the first in her family to graduate from college, has proposed a bill to use state money to pay for community college tuition for students who stay on track and produce good grades.
The Democrat from Anderson says her bill may have little chance of passing in a Republican-controlled Legislature, but she’d like to see it get a hearing.
“We all know we have to invest more in education,” Austin said. “I just want to get this discussion started.”