Ivy Tech warns new academic rules threaten gut 200 high school dual credit programs

Dual credit courses allow high school students to earn college credits through classes they take while in high school. Some students graduate high school with a full year’s worth of college credits at essentially no expense, meaning they save thousands of dollars in room, board and tuition.

But more stringent qualifications for university professors and high school teachers who teach general education classes threaten to hollow out a large portion of Indiana high schools’ dual credit programs.

Ivy Tech Community College estimates that the new policies will gut dual credit programs at more than 200 Indiana high schools with which the college has partnered.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said she has great concerns about how the policy changes could diminish dual credit programs in Indiana.

“It’s a huge issue,” she said recently as she visited Greensburg schools.

Greensburg school leaders said the new policies will undermine their decade-long effort to establish a robust dual credit program that has saved local families tens of thousands of dollars.

And, they said, at a time when the state has emphasized college readiness — and student loan debt exceeds $1 trillion nationwide — the policy changes are coming at an inopportune time.

The new policies were adopted this summer by the Higher Learning Commission, a Chicago-based private organization that accredits about 1,000 colleges and universities in 19 states including Indiana.

The HLC has adopted more stringent qualifications for professors who teach general education classes. The qualification standards affect high school teachers, because dual credit classes technically are offerings of the universities that accept the credits.

The commission is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as one of six organizations across the nation that accredit post-secondary institutions.

If the institutions fail to follow the requirements, they may jeopardize their accreditation, which signifies that “education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality.” Losing accreditation typically is a death knell for a college or university.

“All institutions are expected to meet all of our requirements,” said commission spokesman John Hausaman.

HLC’s new policies require that faculty who teach general education courses hold a master’s degree in the discipline they are teaching. If they hold a master’s degree in another discipline, they must have completed at least 18 graduate credit hours in the discipline they are teaching. Teachers currently have to have only 36 hours of graduate or undergraduate courses in their area of teaching to teach dual credit courses.

The changes were scheduled to take effect in January, but were pushed back to September 2017 to give affected institutions more time to prepare.

Many Indiana high school teachers — even some who have taught dual credit classes for years — lack the updated credentials.

Greensburg school officials said that schools, already strapped for cash, cannot afford to send numerous teachers to complete additional college coursework.

John Newby, who oversees dual credit programs for Ivy Tech, said that the changes threaten to derail dual credit programs at about 215 high schools with which the college is partnering.

“We think that there will be … a major impact on that programming for Ivy Tech and certainly, of course, for the high schools,” he said.

If the changes took effect today, hundreds of high school teachers that Ivy Tech has authorized to teach the dual credit courses would lose their credentials, Newby said.

Among the 19 states overseen by HLC, Indiana is being hit particularly hard by the changes because of the state’s robust dual credit program, he said. The state has focused on making such programs available to increase Hoosiers’ educational attainment. According to the Census Bureau, about 23.2 percent of Indiana residents have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 28.8 percent nationwide.

Rationale

Hausaman, of the Higher Learning Commission, said via email that the updated policies reflect what has long been the commission’s expectation: “That faculty members teaching general education courses, or other non-occupational courses, hold master’s degrees or higher in the discipline in which they are teaching.”

“An expert faculty member is a critical element in ensuring that dual enrollment students have a college experience that is as rigorous as the college experience they would have had by taking the same class on campus from a college faculty member,” he said.

Tom Hunter, superintendent for Greensburg Community Schools, said the rationale for the new policy becomes clear by looking at who benefits from the changes.

For each student who goes to college in three years instead of four, universities and colleges lose tens of thousands of dollars, Hunter said.

If only half of the credits earned by Greensburg Community High School's class of 2015 were transferred, state colleges and universities easily could lose more than $250,000 in tuition costs, at about $300 per credit hour. If only half of the state's high schools have a similarly robust program as Greensburg, the state's colleges and universities stand to lose $50 million annually, and more if enrollment in such programs continues to grow.

“Follow the money,” Hunter said.

Hausaman said the changes came about through “comments received from institutions and peer reviewers.” When asked for details about the comments and who made them, he wrote, “We don't have any information to provide on the comments received.”

He also said that the commission would not be able to make anyone from the commission available for an interview, saying “we've already made information available on our website.”

The commission’s board chair, David R. Anderson, president of Northfield, Minn.-based Saint Olaf College, referred questions to the commission. Several other board members could not be reached Friday.

Hausaman said the commission is funded through membership dues of accredited colleges and universities.

A U.S. Department of Education official said the department “did not have any involvement with the HLC’s new policies. The HLC is a private member organization and the members determine their standards and policy changes.”