Early college for high school students has zero opposition. And yet Massachusetts is an underachiever in giving kids a leg up on college.
Education experts, researchers, and advocates all agree that the initiative, which allows high school students to take free college courses, is a winner — great for students and the Massachusetts economy. For high school students, participating in early college more than doubles their odds of immediately enrolling and then persisting to a second year of college, according to studies. And Massachusetts needs college graduates more than ever.
The question for policy makers is, if early college yields such strong academic results and there is no political opposition to it, why is it currently reaching just 3 percent of students enrolled in public high schools in Massachusetts, or about 8,200 students? In contrast, 12 percent of Ohio’s high schoolers are enrolled in College Credit Plus, a similar dual-enrollment program.
“We know it’s possible,” Erika Giampietro, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Early College, said last week at the State House during “2024 Early College Day,” an event dedicated to bringing together policy makers and education stakeholders to advocate for an expansion of the program. “We believe [early college] needs to reach 15 percent of high schoolers to make a meaningful dent in college success rates statewide.”
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Massachusetts should bet more heavily on early college, particularly because it serves many students who typically face systemic barriers in higher education. More than half of students enrolled are Black or Latino and nearly half come from low-income households, according to the alliance. These are students who typically are the first in their families to attend college or for whom a higher education is a pipe dream. Early college unlocks post-secondary education pathways for them and demystifies what it means to attend college.
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Consider the experience of Destiny Egbuta, who moved with her family to the United States from Nigeria when she was in eighth grade. She enrolled in early college while at Lynn Classical High School, from which she graduated last year. She’s currently studying nursing at Salem State University. “The program helped me build confidence and resilience stepping into the higher education field,” Egbuta said during a panel I moderated at the advocacy event last week. “It just taught me a lot, even what the professors expect, what being in college feels like even while being in high school.”
The urgency to grow early college is also about creating a diverse workforce pipeline for the state economy.
“To us employers, the most important thing about early college is the equity it promotes,” Jay Ash, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, said at the event. “About 65 percent of employers around the state have trouble hiring qualified workers. What is early college? About 70 percent of the jobs that we have here in Massachusetts require some form of post-secondary education.”
To help grow the program, there’s a bill in the Legislature that would establish a new state government unit dubbed “college in high school,” a centralized office in charge of managing programs like early college, Advanced Placement, and others. It was filed by state Representatives Jeff Roy and Kate Lipper-Garabedian. This isn’t about adding layers of bureaucracy. Early college is built on collaboration and this new office would provide “the structure necessary to catapult” the initiative, Roy told me.
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Beyond passing that bill, how can Massachusetts sustain early college’s momentum? Current investment in the initiative is at around $30 million. But the state must also articulate a bold vision with specific targets so that stakeholders can be held accountable. Ambition requires commitment to accountability. In other words, the state should be able to say: If five years from today there aren’t, say, 45,000 students enrolled in early college, then call us out on it.
To be clear, the growth in the program so far has been impressive — to go from 1,000 students enrolled in 9 early college programs in 2018 to 50-plus programs and a 720 percent growth of students is no small feat. Money has been a factor, sure, but that’s not all.
“We’re exiting the startup phase,” Giampietro said. “If in five years the program isn’t a whole lot bigger than it is right now ... [it would be due to] a combination of a bunch of little things. The Legislature has been leading, they’ve been really supportive. But it would be things like, are there enough faculty at these colleges who can and want to teach early college? Did we all do the work to get more faculty ready to do this? Did colleges and high schools work together well enough to cross the silos of their two campuses? Did [everyone] put this at the top of their priority list?”
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That’s a difficult, but not impossible, assignment. If other states have figured out a way to scale early college programs, then Massachusetts should be able to do so as well.
Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com. Follow her @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.
