Dive Brief:
- Elected officials in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have introduced legislation to expand options for early college credit at the high school level in an effort to increase college accessibility and affordability.
- The Making College Affordable and Accessible Act — introduced Monday by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Gary Peters (D-MI), and Reps. Tom Reed (R-NY) and Jared Polis (D-CO) — aims to expand access to early college programs by making grant money available to higher education institutions.
- This money could be used to run such programs, offer professional development to teachers in them, and support course design, course approval processes, community outreach, student counseling, and support services.
Dive Insight:
Successful early college programs have gotten attention from all levels, including the president, who discussed Pathways in Technology Early College High School in New York City during his 2013 State of the Union address. P-TECH is a partnership between IBM and the city that offers students up to six years of high school to graduate with an associate degree. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, early college students across the country earn an average of 36 college credits and almost one-third of them earn an associate degree.
Like Promise programs, early college helps extend free, public education to the first two years of college, a proposition that is increasingly being seen as the government’s responsibility in our new economy.