Batesville, IN— Through an innovative partnership with Ivy Tech in Batesville, one-half of Batesville High School (BHS) seniors graduating in May 2020 will also have earned enough credits to equal one full year of college—at virtually no cost to them.
With a steady upward trend in the number of BHS students earning an entire year’s worth of college credits and unique work-based cooperative programs, the partnership between the Batesville Community School Corporation and Ivy Tech is a model for providing comprehensive career pathway options, according to Batesville Community School Corporation (BCSC) superintendent Paul Ketcham. Because the Ivy Tech course enrollment is provided at no cost to the student, each of them can potentially save between $15,000 and $20,000 on future college expenses.
“We are in the seventh year of this partnership with Ivy Tech and, each year, the program gets stronger,” Ketcham said. “Others look to us as a model of how to make this work for students, both in regard to the opportunities offered and the cost (free except for textbooks).
“Next May, we expect 80 of our seniors—50 percent of the class—to earn 30 college credits, which is equal to one year of college,” Ketcham explained. “If the students didn’t have this opportunity and instead had to take those classes at a typical four-year institution, the total cost associated with them earning those credits could have approached $1.6 million. That savings proves that this is a worthwhile venture. Like other creative partnerships in Batesville, this cooperative funding effort by the City of Batesville, the school corporation, and Ivy Tech is yet another huge accomplishment for our small city.”
Students interested in Ivy Tech programs may participate in two different ways. First, for those who plan to pursue further education after high school, Ivy Tech offers BHS students 16 different college-level courses, some taught at Ivy Tech and some at BHS. Thanks to the Statewide Transfer General Education Core (STGEC) program, credit for these classes is guaranteed to transfer to all public four-year colleges in the State of Indiana. Students earning 30 hours are often eligible to enter college as sophomores via this transferability agreement. This enables some BHS graduates to gain a college degree in just three years.
“We usually have about 170 juniors and seniors who are enrolled in an Ivy Tech class during any given academic year,” Ketcham said. “Before this program started in 2012, students were lucky to have taken one or two college-level courses. Now, we’re sending them to college as sophomores, at virtually no cost to them. That’s an amazing accomplishment.”
