October 30, 2007
High-School Students Seek Online College Courses
Jamie Gladfelter, an online economics instructor at community colleges across the country, tells The New York Times in an interview this month that he is seeing an uptick in the number of ambitious high-school students who are taking his courses for credit.
“These students are able to satisfy their general-education requirements with little cost, and enter a four-year university with a year of credits under their belts,” he says during the interview. “Students in this group are usually very bright and have excelled in academics.”
Are other online instructors observing this trend?—-Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday October 30, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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I’d be interested to know if the check list many university admissions departments use to sort their mail distinguishes between a “transfer” student and an entrepreneurial high school graduate with some college credits earned along the way.
I know of a student who graduated from high school with 66 coherent, accredited semester hours, and a 3.8 collegiate GPA (4.0+ HS GPA) and the public ivies wouldn’t give him a second glance.
I fear these highly motivated high school students may actually be harming themselves, if university admissions practices simply lump them in with all other “transfer” students.
PS: This student has a 1410 (old, two-part) SAT, was a member of Student Govt., class play, prom committee, humane society volunteer – the whole package, but apparently he looked like a community college transfer student who had no extracuricular activities “since” high school.
I watched as his HS classmates with less impressive HS transcripts, and no college credits, were accepted to these schools – as traditional FTFT freshmen.
As the phenomenon of highly motivated high school students graduating with a year or more of college already completed continues, the nation’s universities will need to manifest their professed desire for more high-quality (read: “boosts our reported graduation rate”) “transfer” students by 1: getting common core curricula developed, and 2: creating space in the upper division classrooms.
— gfh Oct 31, 12:40 PM #
Our institution enrolls students who have taken “dual credit” courses in high school (often from us, but also from other colleges or univeristies) and/or online courses. These students are not considered transfers and are enrolled as FTFT if they are full-time students. They must, of course, submit official transcripts of work taken elsewhere prior to high school graduation. Any college admissions process should be collecting the information necessary to make the appopriate distinctions for initial classification.
— john tee Oct 31, 04:18 PM #
Elite universities are hidebound and blinkered. All the progressive ideological noise is compensatory. There’s no point in waiting for them to change, unless you are concerned about your unborn grandchildren’s careers, or something like that. You have to contribute to building an alternate future in whatever way you can.
I started by adding electronic components to my classroom courses, and was therefore ready to jump in when online universities started to explode a few years ago. I’d written memos as far back as 1993 at NYU saying higher ed’s future would be increasingly electronic, but as in most businesses people are concerned primarily about getting through the current year or the current week.
When elite online ed kicks in, I’m already going to be there building it.
With regard to their pedagogical modes and attitude toward actual undergrad students, the Ivies (et al.) are really GMs, circa 1975. :-)
— G D Nov 8, 08:11 AM #