Hope and change I support

I favor cutting high school by one year, or college by one year, or both, for at least some students. More and more other folks think the same way.

"In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade".

"Plan Would Allow for Early College".

Comments

[anonymous]

As far as I can tell, this route is already available to students willing to work the system. I'm not particularly intelligent nor ambitious, but here's how I shaved a semester off of high school, and potentially 3 semesters off an engineering degree in college:

I went to school in Alaska in the early 90s. I took college classes after school starting my sophomore year, and I graduated a semester early from high school. I did have to take a "summer school" PE class (jump-roping, if you must know) to fulfill my PE requirement.

The courses I took at University of Alaska, if I remember correctly, were Trig, Calc 1, Calc 2, Calc 3, Advanced Calc, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Philosophy, and a couple programming classes. Meanwhile in high school I took AP Physics, AP Econ, AP English, AP History, 5 years of French (including junior high) and 4 years of Japanese.

In total I was able to transfer 39 credits (about 1.5 years) worth of credits into University of Michigan. I could have transferred more if I'd applied myself to entrance tests.

I'd guess in total my parents paid about $2000 for the UAA classes, and the savings at U of M was in the neighborhood of $40,000.

[Jack]

Not the same thing, but Quebec has had for many years the following system: 11 years of school (ending with a high school diploma), 2 years of junior college (with a terminal degree that has little value by itself), and 3 years of university for a BA/BSc. I am not sure the system is better, but for economists who believe in signalling, I think it creates more easily a meaningful separating equilibrium. Note that you can, as I did, finish HS in Quebec then go to university elsewhere, saving one year of time and money.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

A few years ago I tutored a young woman in econ and statistics who'd left high school after her sophomore year for a three year community college program (in Washington state)that produced a high school diploma plus two years of credits acceptable at the Univ. of Washington.

She had her BA before she was 21.

[JorgXMcKie]

While not everyone is, probably, equipped [in more ways than one] to finish HS in 3 years or less, we frequently deliberately make it difficult to do so in order to continue to receive one or another kind of funding. Perhaps school systems should be paid a bonus for students who can graduate in 3 years and pass some standardized tests.

[My parents refused to allow me to skip grades, but I was loaded up with extra reading, even in a very rural school system and loaded up with academci classes in HS. Oddly enough, years later I'm most glad that I took HS courses in basic bookkeeping and typing. Those serve me well today. I also enjoyed the shop classes, but I don't use those skills so much any more.]

[michael]

What most Californians don't know is that the standards for high school graduation are incredibly low. When I was registering for my senior classes I realized that all I had to do to graduate a semester early was take an English elective. I could have skipped an entire year if I knew what the requirements were.