UNBC & PG School District Announce Dual Credit Program
From left, UNBC President Dr. Daniel Weeks and PG School Board Chair Tony Cable – photo 250 News
Prince George, B.C. – UNBC and the Prince George School District have joined forces.
They signed an agreement today that will allow high-achieving grade 12 students to take university-level courses through UNBC and apply those credits towards both their high school graduation and a future university degree.
Starting this fall, students will be able to complete up to 3 first year courses – one per semester in the academic year.
Prince George School Board Chair Tony Cable says the Dual Credit Collaboration will greatly benefit students throughout the district.
“It just gives them a really great opportunity to pursue post-secondary education. There’s a lot of students that work hard and they get all the courses they need for graduation,” he says. “And instead of taking courses for fun at high school, now they get to look at some post-secondary and start looking at their future goals.”
UNBC Registrar Troy Hanschen says the program helps the university in two important ways.
“We see this as a great opportunity to recruit students to the university because they get here early. They get a sense of what the university is about, what the instructors are about, where to go for all their services which in turn helps us in the retention side of things.”
So which courses will be available to students?
“This year we’re running the program as a pilot program so we’ve limited some of the courses,” he says. “You’ll see they’re from the arts, social sciences, science, and unique courses like outdoor recreation and tourism. I think in the future you’ll see the full slate of first year courses be open.”
Comments
To enhance the academic success of the students who are already successful? Sounds like something an academic came up with
This is two fold in my eyes.
1) It addresses the removal of funding by the prov. government for special needs children ( yes, gifted children were classified as special needs ) and that funding was cut about 4 years, SD57 used to have about 200 students who qualified for extra education as they were gifted, then with a stroke of a pen, that was removed.
2) This gives more of a chance the students will continue to go to UNBC. UNBC is dramatically under the government mandated levels and next year is going to see a huge cut in the budget, unless they can attract more students.
For some students access to university-level courses can make a big difference in how rapidly they attain their academic goals. For example, many secondary schools do not offer calculus. Calculus is a prerequisite for many university courses not only in math but in physics, engineering, and other areas, so having to wait until university to take calculus can slow down students in these areas. For those students ready for calculus in grade 12, the ability to take it at UNBC can not only prevent a gap of a year in their mathematics education but let them proceed with the courses they need once they get to university.
rambledon, Why not award the good students with something like this.. its more than likely those are the ones that will continue onto post secondary education anyways.. also what is the chance of the kid just barely passing to go on to post secondary.. slim and none.
With the no one failing mind set they have in schools now the students who dont do much if anything are getting rewarded already..why not help out the ones who want to do well in school ?
The award is getting them out of a terrible school system into something that actually promotes learning. There going to go to university anyway but the school board should be looking at improving the education in high schools first instead of getting rid of the good students early
My son did AP courses in Grade 12 and got credit for 1st year university clases already about 3 years ago. How is this different?
Since CNC still has UT (University Transfer) courses with specific agreement to transfer to other Universities (I assume UNBC would be included) I wonder whether CNC does, or will, have a similar agreement with SD 57?
I think both CNC and UNBC would benefit if UNBC would be the institute for University courses, even those which transfer specifically and primarily to professional programs at UBC and SFU. UNBC would increase its enrolment and CNC can concentrate on shorter technical/trades programs including post diploma and post degree programs which can provide specific application skills so much needed whether in PG, BC, or Canada.
They aren’t “getting rid” of the good students. They are giving them an awesome learning opportunity that won’t have a negative impact on the other students. I think this is awesome. The advanced kids are vulnerable without some sort of challenge. Boredom is not a good thing and in recent years pretty much all the programs for advanced kids have been cut. I don’t think you CAN improve the school system to the point that these sorts of things won’t be needed. The kids are never all going to be operating on the same academic level.
Comments for this article are closed.