Despite tough entrance competition and rising tuition fees, high school students across Ontario are applying to dual credit programs at a record rate this year.
According to a memo from Academic Partnerships, there are currently 1,006 students from 41 high schools studying part-time at Algonquin.
“Communication with our school’s partners is what makes this program work,” said Jeremy McQuigge, acting manager at the department. “We rely on the good work of guidance counselors at high schools across six district school boards.”
“We have a great team here that help to transition students in,” said McQuigge. “We do special orientations for them.”
The 2015-2016 academic year marks the 10th anniversary of the dual credit program. Its success is exemplified in the 67 per cent admission rate to full-time post-secondary enrollment at Algonquin. Students who were accepted to this program tend to go to the same institution when they graduate from high school.
“The students like the idea of going to Algonquin, it’s like ‘I’m not high school any more,’ ‘I got to be an adult,’ ‘I got to make my own choices,’” McQuigge said. “Sometimes they make bad choices, but they learn from that.”
According to Tracy Norris, coordinator at the Academic Partnership, students are selected by guidance offices at high school for a variety of reasons, including pathway exploration, career clarification and exposure to an adult learning environment.
“We actually have more students who’d like to participate in the program than we can take,” commented McQuigge. He said this was primarily due to the way funding is run.
High school students are scheduled to use one of their co-op days to come to Algonquin, unlike other colleges where students may have to skip their high school classes, according to McQuigge. When they’re not in their program classes, students gather in a large, book-filled room at A135D to study under the help of a mentor.
“The teaching in here is actually better than in a [high school] classroom,” said Alexandra Mercer, a student at St. Paul High School. “You get to work with your own page. The teacher will come and do whatever she can do help you.”
“In a class room, there’re just so many kids. The teacher just can’t get to them all so there’re a lot of time you just sit there not knowing what to do,” she recounted.