The wall between high school and college is getting demolished by more Rochester students
ROCHESTER — What started as a trickle when Minnesota high school students were first given the option of taking college classes has, four decades later, become more of a stampede.
And for hundreds of Rochester Public Schools students, Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) has meant the freedom to redefine their own educational experience while blurring, if not outright demolishing, the wall that once separated high school from college.
That appeal is evident at Rochester Community and Technical College, where the number of PSEO students — those who earn college credit while still in high school — has soared within the last six years, from 601 students in spring 2018 to 1,121 students in spring 2024.
Much of that surge happened during the COVID pandemic, said Dale Amy, RCTC director of high school collaborations.
Stuck at home doing remote school work, students weren't experiencing high school the way they had imagined. So many opted to kill two birds with one stone by taking PSEO classes online, allowing them to get college credit and meet their high school requirements.
"That was a big addition to our enrollment," Amy said about COVID's role in boosting PSEO numbers.
The influx of PSEO students at RCTC was also a bright spot to an otherwise gloomy enrollment picture when the two-year institution was suffering from declining enrollment. Within the last several school years RCTC has seen an enrollment rebound.
Forty-two percent of RCTC's 1,121 PSEO students last spring were RPS students.
"Whenever (RCTC President) Jeff Boyd tells me about his rising enrollment, I always say, 'you're welcome,'" RPS Superintendent Kent Pekel said.
PSEO students at RCTC come from nearly every nook and cranny of the state, serving students from 58 different high schools, including a couple of students from as far away as Black Duck, Minnesota, who take the courses online, Amy said.
A preponderance of PSEO students at RCTC are women. In spring 2024, 717 women took dual enrollment classes compared to 404 men.
Kadra Awad, a Century High School senior who began taking PSEO last year, liked the fact that she was working toward a high school diploma and a college associate's degree at the same time. The option also saved her a lot of money, as her tuition and books at RCTC were paid for by the program.
She heard about PSEO from her siblings, who both took the dual credit program. One of her older sisters boasted that she saved an estimated $40,000 from taking her general education requirements at RCTC rather than the University of Minnesota, where she later transferred.
There is also a different vibe being a high school student on a college campus, Awad said. You are held more accountable to yourself.
"I really liked how it's very like independent work because I'm no longer in a high school setting," Awad said. "I'm in a college setting. I like doing it, because of the independence part."
Awad said she talks about the benefits of PSEO to other students, yet some are reluctant to take the dual-enrollment option, fearful about sacrificing their high school experience.
As a full-time student at RCTC, Awad doesn't spend any time at Century except for after-school sports and other extracurricular activities. She remains connected to Century and her classmates through her roles as president of the Black Student Union and Health Occupation Students of America. She is also captain of the tennis team.
The eligibility requirements for PSEO depend on the student's rank. High school seniors must be in the upper one-half of their class or score at or above the 50th percentile on the ACT or SAT, according to the Minnesota State system. Juniors must be in the upper one-third of their class or score at or above the 70th percentile on one of the tests.
Sophomores may enroll in a career or technical education course at a Minnesota State college or university if they meet certain requirements.
PSEO is one of several dual credit opportunities available to high school students that also include Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and College in the Schools.
Joe Nathan, a senior fellow with the Center for School Change, had a hand in writing the original 1985 PSEO law as well as other subsequent iterations. The original law didn't have any requirements for PSEO admission.
Because the costs associated with high school and college are collapsed into a dual credit experience, both families of students and taxpayers come out winners financially. Studies commissioned by an advocacy group called "People for PSEO" found the option saved Minnesota families and students $60 million per year and taxpayers $9 million per year, Nathan said.
Research from the University of Columbia, Nathan said, shows that PSEO can be "especially helpful" for low-income kids, students of color or students who haven't traditionally gone on to college, Nathan said. That's because the students who do well in PSEO discover something about themselves.
"What seems to be happening is something called academic momentum," Nathan said. "When a youngster from Rochester goes to RCTC, particularly a youngster who is the first in his family to go to college, they say, 'Well, I can do this!' So it's not simply a matter of taking the courses, it's a real change in the way that the youngster feels about themselves."
The program isn't free of downfalls. Students who stumble can be dealt a negative double-whammy, both falling behind in their graduation requirements and receiving a permanent failing mark on their college transcript.
Pekel said PSEO has clear merits, but it could be improved upon. A big part of the district's strategic plan is to prepare kids for college and a career. That means making sure that whatever classes a Rochester student is taking at RCTC or any post-secondary institution "truly aligns" with "where they want to go after high school."
The problem is that while many are drawn to the financial incentives and potential cost savings of PSEO, less regard is sometimes given to whether the college course they are taking is the "most rigorous" and "appropriate" for their long-range goals. He calls it a "real deficiency" in the school system right now. If students had such long-range plans, they might discover a class at Century, John Marshall or Mayo that better serves their academic goals.
"We do not have adequate, high-quality post-secondary plans that our kids start developing in middle school, and then they work through high school," Pekel said. "They have a plan where they want to go, and that's something we're building."
He said a priority for the district is offering more classes in the high schools that offer college credit.
Because of the way schools are funded — with the money following the student — school districts lose funding for every class taken through PSEO. So as the number of Rochester students taking PSEO has grown from year to year, so has the hit to the district's budget. Rochester Public Schools, for example, is projected to lose $2.9 million in the 2024-25 school year.
When the number of RPS students taking PSEO were small, it was possible to absorb the loss and hold the high schools financially "harmless." In other words, Rochester high schools didn't lose staffing or budget allocation from the loss of students to PSEO. But that may no longer be possible given the growing size of the PSEO cohort.
"Internally, we have to change the way we pay for them in Rochester Public Schools, because we are holding the high schools harmless, and that's not sustainable with the number of kids we have now," Pekel said.
