Articulation Agreements Can Trim College Cost

COURT HOUSE – High school articulation agreements with post-secondary education institutions allow students to get an early start on career ambitions and pick up college credits before enrolling in a college.
Such arrangements serve colleges as a recruitment tool while they also reinforce a student’s focus on completion of a degree program.
The programs also can reduce the cost of post-secondary education.
The concept is simple. The execution requires hard work at both the high school and the college ends of the articulation agreement.
What It Is
The articulation agreement is essentially a contract between institutions. It’s a partnership in which a course or a program of study at the high school has been structured to meet the rigorous standards for college-level instruction and learning outcomes.
Once it is part of an articulation agreement with a specific college, the course or program provides a high school student with a seamless transfer of credit following successful completion. This provides the high school student with an avenue to early credit toward a degree or progress toward an industry certification.
A lot of attention has been paid to the students who graduate high school and enter college unprepared for the rigors of college study. They often find themselves in remedial classes.
Students who take advantage of articulated courses or programs while in high school represent the flip side of that coin. They enter college better prepared with an enhanced understanding of what success in college-level courses requires.
Examples:
Community colleges have taken the lead nationally in making the academic connections with secondary schools that result in articulation agreements.
Rowan College Burlington County has formal programs with 22 state high schools. They describe the courses in the articulation agreements as “pre-determined courses that can be transferred in” by students who participated in the high school program.
In the last several years, local area high schools have been launching academies that help students concentrate their electives in a special area of study. Within these academies there are often specific courses that are part of articulation programs. 
Lower Cape May Regional High School (LCMR) offers an academy of law enforcement and public safety in which the coursework in Introduction to Criminal Justice and in Terrorism and Homeland Security offer articulation credits at Atlantic Cape Community College. Similarly, the academy for culinary arts and baking also has an agreement with Atlantic Cape.
LCMR’s academy of television and broadcasting offers an opportunity for credits in film production at Stockton University.
Middle Township High School offers academies in areas as varied as business, computer science and performing arts.
Again embedded in the academies are courses that can allow a student to gain college credit.
A Rutgers Program Turns 25
On June 7, Rutgers University held a 25-year reunion of individuals who helped start The Health Sciences Careers Program in the School of Health Professions. Cape Issues member Thomas Henry was one of those at the ceremony.
Henry was the assistant commissioner for Vocational Education in the state Department of Education when he helped launch the program.
At the time, Henry was given a Distinguished Service Award for his efforts.
The program began with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey which later merged with Rutgers.
The program used faculty from UMDNJ to teach courses in participating high schools awarding students advanced college credit for satisfactory completion.
At the ceremony officials announced that there have been 16,000 graduates of the program in its 25-year history. 
There are 70 participating secondary schools including, in Cape May County, the Cape May Technical High School. The program allows students to gain as many as 34 college credits while in high school.
Part of the Solution?
In the 1990s when the Rutgers program was started, national education reform fueled a proliferation of collaborative initiatives across levels of institutions, including the growth of high school and college articulation and curriculum development.
That goal of cooperation across all levels of education may be even more important today as community college enrollments drop, some colleges consider mergers and the percentages of academically unprepared students attempting to enter colleges grows.
Articulation agreements that offer focus and academic opportunity to high school students are not a cure-all for what ails at the nexus of secondary and post-secondary education, but their care and feeding may well be a part of the solution for which the nation searches.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.