When did this happen? I never even heard of it until after I graduated high school and got to college with a bunch of other freshmen who magically had college credits without having to pay anyone. My HS wasn't that small, I had a graduating for class of like 118. web.archive.org/web/2023020114…
@fu I think I heard of Advanced Placement (AP) courses around the time that we were looking into colleges for one of the kids. Depending on which kid, that was probably around 1996 or a decade later.
1st son chose to attend the local community college, but after two weeks, he dropped out and joined the military. The middle and high schools where 2nd son and half son attended had something even better than hybrid courses that counted for college credit: students could take real college courses and get high school credit as well as college credit. 2nd son did that and probably accumulated about a year's worth of college credits. (Then he went to a college that did not have an articulation agreement with the California community college system, so they did not accept his credits.)
For the record, half son was unmotivated (he believed he was too stupid for college) and I was working out of town most of the time, so he didn't sign up for college until he was out of high school, and then he dropped out during the first semester.
@LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} yeah so I would have graduated HS during that time frame. It certainly existed, as my college classmates had these magic things, but unless I'm a complete moron it wasn't deeply embedeed in the American Education system. I knew of classmates from high school that did the "dual enrollment" thing where the State paid for them to attend the Wisconsin equivalent of Community College whilst still taking some classes in High School, but they had to be invited to do so because they were smart as all get out (the fact they were well connected in the community, daughter of one of the largest employers in town, and son of an Olympic gold medalist respectively, probably didn't hurt).
Then he went to a college that did not have an articulation agreement with the California community college system, so they did not accept his credits.
The more I learn about other states' post secondary education systems, the more I think that Wisconsin seems to be the only one that has it right in the U.S. Every public school in the state, including every two-year institution, it's all the University of Wisconsin. Whether you are going to the flag ship UW-Madison (i.e. home of the Wisconsin Badgers) or the two-year Community College in Rice Lake [i.e. The University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire - Barron County Campus (UW-EC-BC)] all of the credits are the same everywhere no questions of transfers or acceptance. There's really very little reason to go to UW-Madison (or UW-Eau Claire, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Green Bay, etc.) for the first two years unless you just like spending money with little expected return on investment, as the prices vary greatly from campus to campus.
@fu Transferss between various state owned institutions (University of California [which is constitutionally required], California State University [which were originally teacher training "normal schools"], California Community Colleges) are pretty automatic. And having attended both CC and CSU campuses, I'd recommend taking every possible CC course before transferring to CSU.
It was leaving California to attend a private campus in another state that caused the issue. My impression was that they'd have rejected credits from "USC":{https://www.usc.edu/} and "UCLA":{https://www.ucla.edu/}, too.
@LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} yes, I learned significantly more during the short time I attended Oakland Community College than when I attended Northern Michigan University for 4 years. There's a big difference between learning from professors who actually work in the field than learning from professors who are full time academics mostly dealing in theory, much of which is outdated.
I think one thing that affected #sonTwo's choice of a campus was that we went to a "college fair" when he was in 8th or 9th grade and most of the schools weren't very interested in students who would not apply right away. The exception was my former CSU campus ... and he wanted to get out of my footprints.
@LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} one of my worst finical decisions was paying out-of-state tuition for 4 years because I wanted to go "somewhere nobody knew me" (another being marrying my college sweetheart who did the same). If our kids want to go to college, we are willing to pay for them to go 2 years to the local Community College. (Or we can give the same money to start a business, pay expenses during an apprenticeship, etc.)