Editorial: Can dual enrollment solve college cost problem?

Tribune-Review | Saturday, April 6, 2024 6:01 a.m.

Courtesy of Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Ella Fleming, 16, an Indiana Area Senior High School junior poses outside the Eberly College of Business on the IUP campus where she is dual-enrolled and earning college credit.

All conversations about college tend to boil down to the same problem: It just costs too much.

The average cost of one year in college is about $19,000. That puts Pitt and Penn State in that arena. As state related but not state run, they are high for public schools but still half to one-third the cost of the most expensive private schools. Multiply by four years for a bachelor’s degree, add in room and board and a long list of fees, and you can quickly top $100,000.

And that is before student loans. Financing college education has reached a height of $1.74 trillion in the U.S., per the Federal Reserve. A College Board study released in January put 2020-21 college graduates leaving school with about $30,000 in debt. Go to a private school or don’t qualify for federal student loans, and the numbers go up.

Despite the debate — and attempts that some schools have made to hold the line on tuition, it is hard to see a time when the cost of a year in college will fall. There is a big difference between a tuition freeze and a tuition cut. Former Penn State President Eric Barron often said the most expensive tuition increase was an extra year.

Barron was talking about students not finishing in four years — taking extra semesters to finish their degrees. But the inverse also could be true. Is cutting the length of time they spend in school the most effective way to trim education costs and student debt?

The easiest way to do that is not to go. That’s hard for positions like teachers, doctors, scientists and architects. But cutting unnecessary time is different.

Ella Fleming, for instance, is an Indiana student — both Indiana Senior High School and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. At just 16, she is a high school junior and a college student participating in dual enrollment business classes.

Her goal is to shave as much as two years off her time in college. Yes, she will still pay for credits, but at a reduced fee thanks to efforts by the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education to cut costs. But she also will save on two years in dorms, two years of meal plans and two years of all the extra fees.

The downside is that it requires kids as young as 15 or 16 to figure out what they want to do with their lives. The National Center for Educational Statistics says 80% of college students change their majors. The average changes their focus three times over the course of their education.

But with two years of college under their belts before graduating from high school, Fleming and students like her should be in a better position to make a course adjustment without breaking the bank.