Reduced lunch program adds concurrent course enrollments

More high school students who qualify for free and reduced lunch are enrolling in concurrent college courses than in previous years, according to new data from the Arkansas Division of Higher Education.

That’s because of Act 1118, a bill sponsored by Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, Division Senior Associate Director Jessie Walker told the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Thursday. The bill allowed students in the National School Lunch program take up to six credit hours of concurrent courses at no charge.

Under the law, the courses are paid for by the public school district, the higher education institution offering the course or through a cost-sharing agreement between the two.

Concurrent courses, on the rise nationally, offer students a chance to tackle college coursework at an earlier age and a cheaper price.

Coordinating board members asked questions Thursday about whether the state was tracking college graduation outcomes for students who earned concurrent credit and about how available the courses are across the state.

Walker said the department is “starting to connect the dots” on tracking how quickly those students earn college degrees and would possibly have some information by next year after the fouryear institutions’ concurrent credit authorization concludes its fifth year.

As far as high school students’ access to concurrent courses, Walker and Division Director Maria Markham said nearly every school district has an agreement with a college or university and can work with Virtual Arkansas if need be.

Act 1118 is also helping increase diversity among students taking the courses, Walker told the board, but data provided by the department show little change since the 20162017 school year.

White students — who made up 62.1% of the state’s public high-schoolers last school year and 67.3% of the state’s public and private college students last school year — have remained 74% of the concurrent course enrollees. Black students comprised 10% of concurrently enrolled high school students last year — down from 11% during the 2016-2017 school year — despite being 19.8% of the public high school population and 15% of the college population.

Hispanic students made a small gain, from 7% to 8% of concurrently enrolled high school students. But that represented a higher percentage than its share of the state’s college population. Last school year, Hispanic students made up 12.7% of Arkansas’ public high-schoolers but only 6.6% of the state’s college population.

Public two-year colleges offered more concurrent courses — in which high school students earn both high school and college credit for taking a single class — last fall than public four-year institutions, a shift from previous years, according to data shown to the coordinating board.

Board member Keven Anderson said he didn’t understand why four-year schools would turn away the opportunity to lower their average credit hour costs by not offering more of the nearly always cheaper concurrent classes.

“I’m scratching my head and wondering why it is down so much for fouryear institutions,” he said. “Is it less profitable for the four-year colleges to have those? Is it a bad deal for them?”

The state’s new higher education funding formula incentivizes public two-year colleges to offer the courses by awarding them points for students passing general education courses, Markham told the board. The formula does not award such points to public four-year colleges.

In fall 2016, four-year schools offered 904 concurrent courses, and two-year schools offered 807. In fall 2018, fouryear schools offered 757 concurrent courses, and two-year schools offered 1,022.

The new funding formula has been in place for the past two school years.

Four-year schools aren’t enrolling fewer high school students, however. During the 2016-2017 academic year, they enrolled 12,419 high school students. Last year, they enrolled 12,635.