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[tuebor]

I'm sure many CHE readers have thought that better coordination between secondary and post-secondary education would improve student preparation.  Of course we all have ideas about what students ought to know before they arrive on a college campus, but for this thread I'd like to pose the question a little differently.  Perhaps the current institutional division of labor should be reexamined.

Consider 3 alternatives:
(1)  The role of high schools could be expanded to include what is now commonly taught to non-remedial first-year students at non-elite post-secondary institutions.  This might necessitate extending the school year or even adding another year to the high school program of study, and might allow reducing baccalaureate programs by a year.
(2)  The role of post-secondary institutions could be expanded to include what is now commonly taught during the senior year of high school.  Again, this would alter the length of time students spend at each institutional level, this time reducing the high school program and extending the baccalureate program.  This might also require a return to _in loco parentis_ policies for 17-year-old students.
(3)  A different sort of institution could be developed and interpolated between high schools and universities.  This new post-secondary/pre-university institution would have a 3-year program that would cover the material now covered in the senior year of high school and also the material covered during the first two years of post-secondary education.  Students could graduate from this type of place with an associate's degree, and then transfer to a university or enter the workforce.  Perhaps community colleges and liberal arts colleges could evolve to fill this niche (dual enrollment may already be a step in this direction).

My question for forum readers is this:  what might be the respective pros and cons of these alternatives, and which would you prefer, all things considered? (Or would the current state of affairs be better than any of these 3 alternatives?)

[philoctetes]

Consider 3 alternatives:
(1)  The role of high schools could be expanded to include what is now commonly taught to non-remedial first-year students at non-elite post-secondary institutions.  This might necessitate extending the school year or even adding another year to the high school program of study, and might allow reducing baccalaureate programs by a year.
(2)  The role of post-secondary institutions could be expanded to include what is now commonly taught during the senior year of high school.  Again, this would alter the length of time students spend at each institutional level, this time reducing the high school program and extending the baccalureate program.  This might also require a return to _in loco parentis_ policies for 17-year-old students.
(3)  A different sort of institution could be developed and interpolated between high schools and universities.  This new post-secondary/pre-university institution would have a 3-year program that would cover the material now covered in the senior year of high school and also the material covered during the first two years of post-secondary education.  Students could graduate from this type of place with an associate's degree, and then transfer to a university or enter the workforce.  Perhaps community colleges and liberal arts colleges could evolve to fill this niche (dual enrollment may already be a step in this direction).

Two of these proposals are currently the case in two Canadian provinces:

Something like (1) is done in Ontario. Pass BA degrees in Ontario only take 3 years, Honours BA take four. There used to be a formal grade 13, but now though they have compressed high school to four many students still take an extra year to get all the university prep courses.

Something like (3) is done in Quebec. High school ends at grade 11, and students go to CEGEPs (Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel) which offer 2 year university prep and 3 year technical programs.

[zharkov]

Let me say at the outset that HS and college are, or should be, qualitatively different.  A college firster is not in the 13th grade. 

Option 1, adding a 13th year to HS makes educational sense to me, but won't fly in most states because of funding. 

Option 2, having HS seniors in college, work be OK for some students -- witness these early college programs -- but many or most are not mature enough.  Lots of 18 y/o students are not mature enough, for that matter, and it would make matters worse to have 17 y/s students.

Option 3, has the same problem with 17 y/o students as option 2.

My ideas....

I.  Because of NCLB, many or most states have some sort of HS leaving exam. That exam should be identical to that state's public college entrance exam. That is, getting a HS diploma should be proof that one is qualified to attend his or her state's public college system.  Now, maybe that is a CC, but a CC in a system that is integrated with the state's 4 year colleges and universities. (Which is true in some states, not in all.)

II.  Get away from the expectation that a BA or BS takes 4 years.  In practice most students take something like 4.5 years, so make it clear at the outset that a "4 year" is likely a 5 year degree.   

[tuebor]

Let me say at the outset that HS and college are, or should be, qualitatively different.  A college firster is not in the 13th grade. 

Yes, maturity is an issue as well as academic preparation.  Some students are ready for college at 16, some are not ready at 19.  It would be good if there could be more flexibility (as there is in some places at the middle school level).  Maybe something like option 3 could be framed in terms of the typical needs of 17-20 year-olds rather than specific academic levels.

Get away from the expectation that a BA or BS takes 4 years.  In practice most students take something like 4.5 years, so make it clear at the outset that a "4 year" is likely a 5 year degree.   

In practice it often does take more than 4 calendar years, but should it?  The problems that delay students' completion could be addressed.  Perhaps that's another thread.

philoctetes:
Thanks for the Canadian info.  I had heard about grade 13, but wasn't sure if that was still the case.  It sounds like Quebec follows something like the French system.

[csguy]

Alternative 2 is the de facto situation for all too many students at non-selective universities.

Perhaps what is really needed is a more flexible system. The better students can finish high school in three years. Weaker students can take five.

[margomcp]

I remember when an 8th grade teacher told my class how different, as in alien, 9th grade/high school was going to be and it didn't happen.  I don't know if we can ever be "prepared" for what we haven't experienced yet.  We always have to be beginners at new tasks.  There's no way that any given high school can prepare one for the myriad types of colleges and higher education opportunities available.  I think what schools we choose are kind of related to our interests and earlier choices as individuals so I think it's likewise up to us to figure out what we're going to want further down the road and prepare ourselves as best we can for that.

That being said, I'd like a system where we can "divorce" ourselves from our public high school and do a "project" for a year or two (form a company, travel, etc.) and catch the GED while we're at it.  There's too many people for whom public high school isn't appropriate anymore and who are more "advanced" or marching to a different drummer and the attendance rules just don't fit.  We've got a mindset that if you don't attend school you're a "dropout" and there isn't any other system for "not fitting" the mold.  We need more distance ed choices now for the last year or two of high school and the first of college.  I guess I'd opt for a modified #3, not tied so tightly to all/none thinking where everyone would have to do #3 instead of what is now done. 

I think we need to break things down more and make them smaller, as in many distant ed high schools in communities, even houses, w/administrative or technology specialists rather than specific teachers, instead of the huge megalopolis high schools with 700+ students.  The larger locations would still work well for sports, occasional group lectures, places to meet in "that" neighborhood, etc.  We need more one-on-one adult/wannabe-adult interaction; I'd like to see "work" schools, kind of in the German model.

[theritas]

(1)  The role of high schools could be expanded ...

Many students require a dramatic change of scenery after establishing an unfortunate pattern in high school to boost their performance.

[epistephiliac]

One place where I lived abroad had high school as the equivalent of grades 7-10, and then something called a "matriculation college" which offered a two-year diploma. This diploma could be a stopping point in and of itself, or a preparatory credential for university.

The matriculation college was more loosely organized and had less rigid discipline than high school, much like university, but the scale was smaller. Classes were more rigorous, too, and there was a lot less hand-holding by teachers, who encouraged independent thinking and research whenever possible. The overall effect was like having students attend a SLAC or CC while still living at home, before going off to university. Some students floundered at first with the added independence, just as some do when they first go to college, but they had time to get their act together (well, some did) before embarking on a degree program.

I thought it was a great system, because it prepared students both academically and in terms of maturity, but I think it would be difficult to institute in this country.

[tuebor]

Bump!
Having spent the last year teaching freshmen composition at a community college, I'm leaning toward option 3. 

[booking]

I thought this thread was on the campus email/web systems that schools used. I am pissed about my own uni's system, so I was ready to rant. Oh well.     

[kmellendorf]

I teach at a community college.  I see a wide variety of students in small classroom environments ranging from ten to fifty students.  This gives me a chance to talk one-on-one with a variety of students about previous education.  Most students say that their high schools did not teach them how to study.  They tell me that they didn't have to study.  Everything was easy.

I know that students taking physics (at algebra or at calculus level) are not the full range of students.  Still, I have served as a tutor for math students as well.  I have spoken with english teachers with offices down the hall.  Students seem to take the opinion that the high schools were in too much of a hurry to get rid of them.

I am not trying to put down high school teachers.  When a school is judged by how many of its students graduate in no more than four years and what the grade distribution is, The tendency in a financially based siciety is to push the students through quickly and make good grades easy to obtain.  When a school is judged by how well its students do in future education and then after graduation, the drive is different.

A test can be taught, and high school teachers have become experts at it.  High school teachers do not have the academic freedom of college professors.  If my students go on to other courses and do poorly because they did not get what was expected from my course, it is a mark against me.  If a high school teacher's student does not get a good grade, it is a mark against the HS teacher and against the high school itself.

As for maturity, in some ways the level has decreased over the years.  Self-evaluation and a desire to do well have faded.
On the other hand, students are in many ways more clever.  We cannot assume that they restrict themselves, or are restricted by authorities in their lives, to values and morals that were once assumed to be so.  Searching for a way to get a grade without working for it is a common goal.  For many people, what you get for your work has become more important than what the work actually is.  Such effects have occured in the past.  They will continue.

If today's educational system isn't as sufficient as the system of thirty years ago, use the effects to induce what the causes are.  One path taken by many post-secondary institutions is to quickly install in the students an awareness of the value of doing well.  It isn't easy, but it is possible.  Expect the students to learn this, require them to do well, and most will acquire such ability within a semester.  Nurse-maid them through their courses, do their work for them, and most students will believe they aren't expected to do well for themselves.  If work isn't necessary, why should they do it?

This sort of project in a high school would be tricky, opening the school up to legal trouble.  Such an effort must take place in an institution a student is not actually required to attend.  As I understand things (an I might be wrong), this is how the law prefers it.

What are students expected to obtain from high school?  Are they obtaining what the country as a whole expects?  If so, then college is the safest place to deal with the problem.  In many ways, we have a little protection from worldly rules.  Our students do not have to stay if they don't like it.  Don't frighten them off, but don't let it be an easy ride.  Until society returns to the moral of a job well done rather than a job well paid for, high school grades remain just a payment for attendance.  The responsibility falls to the colleges because there isn't anyone else "outside" of society.

[tuebor]

kmellendorf:  in light of those facts, which of the options suggested at the beginning of the thread do you favor?

[kmellendorf]

tuebor:  I must say that I lean toward number 2.  Number 1 requires more freedom for high school teachers to teach rather than to please.  This requires a change of public and political attitude.  Number 3, being a truly public institution, would most likely be given all the freedom that public high school teachers have today.  In many situations, college is the first place a student can fail due to not trying.  Unless a student can fail, the student has no reason to try.  If the student doesn't try, no system will suffice.