Of the 82 percent of Hillsdale County students who graduated high school in 2013, less than 60 percent of them pursued postsecondary education. Although this statistic has improved, Hillsdale County still sits 6 percent below the state average. In an effort to improve these numbers, the community and college have partnered to inspire students to make postsecondary plans.
Two years ago, the Hillsdale County Community Foundation partnered with the Michigan Career Access Network to start a local program that helped students make post-secondary education plans. In addition to college degrees, the Hillsdale County Career Access Planning network promotes other paths like certificates or joining the military.
“Our work force requires that you have some kind of postsecondary education,” HCCAP coordinator Lynn Burkett said. “That’s why we’re encouraging kids to have a plan.”
Funding from MCAP and the community foundation enables HCCAP to encourage local high school students to make plans for after graduation. One pilot program through Jackson College, the Welding and Advanced Manufacturing Program, allows high school juniors to enroll in the college’s two-year program. By the end of their high school education, WAMP participants will also graduate with a welding certificate. Twenty students completed the first semester of WAMP and all signed up for the next semester of classes.
“Since these students have enrolled, their GPAs have improved,” Burkett said. “Their college GPAs are better than their high school GPAs, and their high school grades are improving. And it’s because they found a purpose.”
According to Carmen Hughes, a Camden-Frontier High School counselor, making plans for after high school increases students’ motivation to graduate.
“I see a correlation between graduation rates and having postsecondary plans,” Hughes said. “When students are excited about either going into a two-year or four-year college, the military, or the workforce, they know that the first hurdle is obtaining a high school diploma. For students with no postsecondary plans, a high school diploma has less meaning, hence increased dropout rates.”
Every year, HCCAP promotes two events that encourage students to pursue education after college: application week in the fall and decision day in May.
In November, HCCAP sent volunteers to Hillsdale County high schools to help students fill out college applications. Hillsdale College junior Alexis Allen, the GOAL leader of HCCAP, along with other Hillsdale students, helped more than 90 percent of Jonesville High School seniors fill out applications.
“For many of those kids, that was the first college application in their family line,” Allen said. “It is important to show these kids that college is an attainable goal. It’s not just for academic geniuses.”
Bob Drake, Jonesville High School’s academic counselor, doesn’t think students avoid applying to colleges because they don’t care, but because college isn’t on their minds. For many students, college is not a part of family culture and rarely enters household discussions.
“The activities we do make college a reality for these students,” Drake said. “A lot of times that’s what they really need. It’s not an apathy issue and not always an affordable issue.”
HCCAP joins in a statewide goal to see a 60 percent yield of seniors who will pursue post-secondary education by 2015. Although schools like Jonesville High School see a strong interest in postsecondary education plans, a large fraction of students fail to follow through after graduation. Of the more than 90 percent of students who were accepted into colleges last year, only about 60 percent of students attended their first day of college. Burkett calls this fateful period the “summer melt.”
“A lot of students get jobs and think they’re rich when they start making $7 an hour,” Burkett said. “We’ve talked about giving these students mentors to check in with them through the summer. We’re trying to fix the summer melt problem.”
During the school year, Allen plans to create a mentorship program to connect Hillsdale College students with what she calls “at risk” students: the college-ready candidates who will likely fall through the cracks if they are not pushed.
“Connecting them with students who know their fears is huge,” she said. “We want to show them that real people go to college.”
