New state program to provide high school students with free year of college

By Taylor Mirfendereski
The Cannon
Photos of Gov. Ted Strickland (left) and Chancellor Eric Fingerhut (right).
March 7, 2007

Gov. Ted Strickland introduced a new
program in his second State of the
State Address that has the potential to
change the education of qualifying high
school seniors throughout Ohio and the
financial situation for families
responsible for the ever-increasing
price tag of a college education.

The Seniors to Sophomores program
will condense two separate years of
schooling--the senior year of high
school and the freshman year of
college--into one. High school seniors
who meet the program’s requirements will have the option of attending their traditional
senior year in high school or spending their entire year at one of Ohio’s colleges or
universities--tuition free.

The requirements to participate have not been officially laid out, but Chancellor for the
Ohio Board of Regents Eric Fingerhut said interested students may expect the requirements
to include a cut off score on the ACT or SAT, the completion of Algebra II and three years of English by the junior year.

“We’ve got to stop doing things the way we’ve always done them. We’ve got to break down
the artificial barriers that exist in our system. We’ve got to make more choices available in
our system,” Strickland said. “We’ve got to take the steps to make college more attractive to more of our students and we think the Seniors to Sophomores program will accomplish all
of these goals.”

Strickland’s Press Secretary, Keith Dailey, said that the future of Ohio’s economy is
dependent on their ability to educate Ohioans to be problem solvers and innovators.

Fingerhut said that the Senior to Sophomores program was formed through a directive
from Strickland to create a strategic plan for Ohio that will increase college attendance,
make college more affordable, enable more high school students to get college credit and to fulfill a mandate from the General Assembly to fix and improve the Post Secondary
Enrollment Option (PSEO) program.

PSEO allows high school students to take courses at a university or college for credit while
also taking classes at their high school. Fingerhut and Strickland said that the Seniors to Sophomores program is an expansion of PSEO, as students would spend their last year of
high school at a college campus.

Aside from the number of credit hours the student completes, the other difference
between the programs is their means of funding. Currently, the cost of the PSEO program is absorbed by the high schools and the university receives only a portion of the cost of a
regularly-admitted student. Under the Seniors to Sophomores program, the state is
working on a new funding approach that will minimize the financial impact on schools.

“We will create a blending of funding streams [for the new program], so that both colleges
and high schools are treated fairly,” Strickland said.

Lorain County Community College uses a shared funding mechanism for their PSEO
program. Cindy Kushner, Director of Marketing and Outreach Initiative at LCCC, said that
their method was shared with the chancellor. Fingerhut confirmed that this funding method could be implemented into the program.

The chancellor is defining the fiscal arrangements and many other details about the Seniors
to Sophomores program, as it was just recently introduced. He explained that many of the standards with be developed after some students and schools have had the opportunity to partake in the program.

The state is also initiating a grant program called Early Adopters, in which high schools and colleges who are eager to participate will take the lead in the 2008-2009 school year by
being the first to try the program. Based on the experiences of these participants, the state
will determine the best methods for carrying out the program in future years.

“I don’t think this year will be a good representation of what it turns out to be. Little by
little, within the next few years, we will be able to make clear what the standards are and we
will have models of what the financial formulas are. So I am confident that this will spend
very quickly across the state,” Fingerhut said.

Neither the chancellor nor the governor shared the names of the universities and high
schools involved in the program next year.

“We are going to ask all of our public universities and community colleges to participate,
but it’s not a residential program so the focus will be on our community and regional
campuses rather than our main university campuses. However, we hope that main
universities will take students as well,” Fingerhut said.

The Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee said he is unclear about the specifics of
the program, but that OSU will participate and do everything possible to make sure that it’s successful.

“I think of education as being K through life, not K through 12. Anything that allows us to
create an opportunity for young people to attain higher education is a very important idea,”
Gee said.

Mike Nicholson, Olentangy’s Executive Director for Secondary Learning, confirmed that the district has not yet been contacted by the state about participation in the program.

The Olentangy School District is not an Early Adopter, but this doesn’t mean that next
year’s seniors are unable to participate. Fingerhut emphasized that current juniors who are interested in taking part in the program next year, but attend a school that is not
immediately participating, may express their interest in participating through the Ohio
Board of Regent’s website.

Strickland said that he is excited about the program for three reasons: “It will encourage students to become more conscientious students during their freshman, sophomore and
junior years so that they can qualify for the program; it will encourage parents to pay more attention to their son or daughters’ work during the early years of high school and it will
save families significant money by making it possible to get a year of college free for their
son or daughter.”

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