Des Moines Area Community College partners with several schools in Iowa to offer dual enrollment classes–classes that earn a student both high school and college credit–to high school juniors and seniors and talented and gifted freshmen and sophomores. High school students do not have to pay for these classes because their high schools pay for them to take up to 23 college credits a year through DMACC. By doing this, colleges are not only advertising their program to a larger audience and keeping their enrollment steady, but they are also giving students a chance to try out professions before they take on any amount of student loan debt.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, less than 10 percent of students born in the bottom quartile of household incomes are able to accumulate a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 25 years old, compared to the 50 percent of students in the top quartile of household incomes that achieve the same goal. In the 2010-2011 school year, 1.4 million high school students took part in dual enrollment courses, and the numbers keep growing.

Cost is no longer a barrier to some students who want to obtain a degree, yet don’t have the resources to. But these classes are not for the unmotivated–at ADM High school, if a student’s grade in a dual enrollment class is not passing, the student will have to pay the school back for the credits that they took.

When students take on college classes, they are taking on a taste of what it’s like to be responsible for themselves. Students must develop their own sense of time management, study sometimes tricky course material, and be able to communicate with not only others in their class, but also their instructor in a professional manner.

Even though that may sound intimidating, a lot of good things come out of taking on these responsibilities.  After all, semesters only last for around three months, and hard work is always visible. Students have the capability to either lessen the amount of financial debt they would have taken on, or get more of a grasp on what direction they want to point their life in.

Senior Cassidy Hammerberg is involved in medical classes, and says that she thinks the variety of classes ADM offers from DMACC are fine the way they are, but her least favorite thing about her previous classes were that she could never get emails back from her professor in a timely manner.

Hannah Borst, also a senior, has taken four classes through DMACC, and will have completed six by the end of her senior year. Borst says that she wishes DMACC offered more of a variety of classes per subject, such as education, but she’s glad that she has access to college courses that don’t cost her anything.

According to educationbythenumbers.org, four years ago 15,000 public high schools enrolled students in more than two million college courses, which is 67% more participation than when dual enrollment courses started to be introduced into public school systems.

College classes have their ups and downs, but in the end only you can decide if they are the right option for you. Students at our high school can see the good and bad in them, but hopefully the program will grow enough so that every high school student who wants to get a jump start on their education can.

Sources:

Taking college courses in high school, new dual enrollment data

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-expanding-college-access-through-dual-enrollment-pell-experiment