Dual credit or concurrent course credit allows high school students to take courses to earn a high school diploma and college credit simultaneously. Strong opinions abound on both sides of dual-credit discussions. This approach especially helps poor and first-generation students. The discussion heats up when any student—rich or poor, gifted or challenged—graduates receiving a high school diploma and an associate’s degree concurrently.

In some states, community colleges offer dual credit; in others, senior institutions participate. There are many permutations. In the Texas Panhandle, 22 students graduated from Borger High School and Frank Phillips Community College simultaneously in 2017, and 11 of them enrolled at West Texas A&M University. The 17- or 18-year-old high school/community college graduates-, having selected courses carefully, enrolled in junior-level classes at senior institutions. This is where contentious discussions start.

Questions regarding emotional maturity, watered-down college credit, genuine college readiness from an intellectual and emotional standpoint and a multitude of other concerns are legitimate. However, if dual credit in high school affords early and serious career, study and readiness assessment, students will likely benefit from thoughtfully applied dual credit.

Growth in dual-credit subscription is born in a number of places. Chief among them is the increasing cost of university attendance. High prices and perceived stagnant quality drives students and families toward a deliberate, personally managed approach to reducing the costs of education.

helpwithassignment.com

While visiting high schools in the Texas Panhandle, I met a young man who within one week was simultaneously graduating from both Bushland High School and Amarillo College. In front of the audience, filled with 200 of his classmates, I offered him a WT scholarship. He declined the offer on the spot. I asked him why. “I will be attending Columbia University in the fall,” said he. I asked him if he had a scholarship. He replied, “I have a full scholarship.” I responded, “I cannot compete with that,” and then I asked him of the 60 dual-credit hours he earned, how many would transfer. He said, “Six hours would transfer.” Clearly, the efficiencies and pragmatics of gaining a degree in a shorter time were not his first priority. After the assembly, the principal affirmed to me that he was one of the brightest students she had ever met.

One student looks for challenges, while another seeks expediency and some pursue both. Variety in student motivation exists at every turn. Public universities must be responsive to a wide range of student interests and aptitudes, including the costs of education. It is our business. Policies, exaggerated expectations and legislative pressures for the past half-century imprudently advocated that everyone should go to college, even if they were neither motivated nor prepared.

Coupled with irresponsible lending, universities frequently focus on income generation, which is sometimes masqueraded as social concern rather than student well-being. The marketplace is voting with its feet. Dual credit can reduce time and cost without sacrificing quality. The value of an excellent educational experience, if too much debt is incurred in achieving it and too little benefit is found in its attainment, is under assault on many fronts. Careful analysis confirms this. Further, according to Brookings, “jumbo” student loans spray gasoline on the fire like the housing bubble.

Dual-credit programs are growing rapidly. The Dallas Independent School District determines that soon thousands of students will graduate from Dallas ISD with earned associate’s degrees. These are not necessarily junk degrees, but opportunities to increase access and reduce the cost of higher education. Many of these combined degrees are rigorous and thoughtful. The wave is coming. University leadership can resist it; they may claim it inferior or antithetical to a “real” university experience. Histrionics fail. The marketplace is at work, and the motivation in many cases is that these community college degrees are at low or no cost to the student.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has proposed that 60% of all Texans ages 25-30 will have earned some type of post-secondary credential by 2030. The THECB has defined dual credit’s role. This is an ambitious goal. It is a serious commitment to improve the quality and nature of the Texas workforce. Business as usual is failing.

Dual credit with “wailing and gnashing of teeth” will become part of the solution. The measures of student ability, indicators of grading procedures and mastery of subject matter all contribute to serious challenges that universities, community colleges and secondary schools must address. In some states, such as Minnesota, efforts are afoot to require the preponderance of high school students to take at least one dual-credit course. This could be an enlightened approach if the dual-credit courses meet rigorous intellectual standards.

As dual-credit students enter universities, especially WT, quality measured by academic achievement and attainment of life aspirations will be tracked carefully. We owe that to our students, communities and state: It is a public responsibility.

How often at night where the heavens are bright

With the light of the glittering stars

Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed

If their glory exceeds that of ours…From “From my Western Home,” 1872, Brewster Martin Higley VI

Pragmatism in American higher education, an emphasis on jobs for graduates, and cost-benefit equations for all degree programs are all legitimate aspirations. As college costs have increased dramatically, the ability to pay off student loans is scrutinized evermore closely.

1000 ideas about Palo-Duro-Canyon

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that salaries for recent bachelor’s graduates in the fields of engineering and science are up to $30,000 higher than peers in the traditional disciplines of humanities, liberal arts and fine arts. But while starting salaries for these graduates may be lower, salaries tend to converge over time. The Gallup Purdue Index, the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences all report similar findings.

Understanding local culture, history, and values seeds the future for young people and in rural communities creates a thread of appreciation linking past, present and future.

The National Agriculture Library catalogs the contributions of tourism, historic resources and other artifacts and accomplishments of culture and history as powerful economic forces in rural communities. From a historical standpoint, small settlements are the texts of our beginnings, where unique stories originate and are recorded serving as recitals of our roots.

A recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts regarding rural arts, design, and innovation in America, reveals that civic engagement and leadership in rural regions results from engaging with the arts. In addition, local businesses consider the impact of the arts and entertainment a magnet for new business development. Arts and humanities organizations are the genesis of innovation.

The belief that the arts and humanities are only important to the native people of a particular region is incorrect.  Engaging in such projects engenders discussion and understanding that is specifically valuable in promoting the benefits of life for all people in smaller communities and provides an extension to the greater “American experience.” For example, a project in rural Ohio, “Latinos in Rural America,” specifically focuses on the cultural imperatives of both the new community of Latinos and the existing community of rural Ohioans.

Americans for the Arts recorded similar trends across our country’s multitude of rural regions. The economic impact of nonprofit arts and cultural industries is profound. Nationally in 2015, the total direct expenditures in such engagements was $166 billion, which created $96 billion in household income, attracted $27 billion in government revenues, and provided 4.6 million jobs. Distributed across the 20 percent of Americans that live in small communities, millions of people are affected.

The axis around which future prosperity in small communities revolves comes, in great part, from the humanities, the fine arts and cultural perspectives. Colleges and universities that commit to the study of the arts and humanities in rural settings have ever-widening spheres of influence.

Events founded on local culture, history and the arts encourage local spending. Such cultural excursions encourage non-local spending. While local audiences spend over $23 per person, visitor spending is doubled. This small but consistent investment in rural communities contributes to economic development. Admittedly, it’s not as dramatic as Google or John Deere coming to town, but the importance of understanding and trumpeting the human experience in small communities has value.

Every state in the nation realizes benefit from the arts. One unintended consequence of the impact of the arts and humanities is that veterans who live in small communities participate in arts-based recovery programs such as integrated medical treatments that help recovery from traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. This affects the 5 million families in the United States who care for someone afflicted by either condition. In addition, in the arts-based recovery programs, care costs go down by $1,000 per veteran. Many veterans rank the importance of arts among the top four assets in recovery.

While the impact of arts and humanities on job creation has a relatively low profile, the “creative” sector added 4.8 million new jobs to the national economy last year.

Universities in rural settings should hold in high regard the contributions that the humanities and the arts make to the cultural, moral, intellectual and economic development that help grow resilient economies.

These communities are the Petri dishes of our future. Attending to local needs first–the conditions, aspirations, and lifeblood of rural communities fuels distinctiveness and purpose and reinforces the foundation on which American enterprise is constructed.

By Kendee Pemberton