Why is early college such a bad thing?

[nancypants]

I started college at 17 and I was none the worse for wear for it.

 

I like the idea of a gap year, though, so if any of my kids finish early, and they have a purpose for a gap year, I will encourage it. OTOH, if the kid wants to go to college early, I'm all for that, too.

 

DH likes the idea of the kids getting their educations done ASAP, with no gaps.

 

My point of view is that they have their lives to get educated, work, marry, have families, and that a one year gap will not make a difference in the long run.

 

At the point one or more of my kids is ready for college, whether they go and when they go will be more up to them than to me.

 

RC

 

As they say in A Bug's Life, "Gaps happen!" :D

 

Dh went away to University just before he turned 18. Went straight on from there and graduated with a 5 year Master of Theology when he was 26. If a person plans to do something that requires years and years of post-secondary / graduate school I certainly think early college is great. If a person wants to do a trade (which, being the daughter of a plumber, I highly admire -- we need more skilled tradesman!) I think there is no reason to push for a gap free education. They will be out there working in the real world, pulling a real paycheck long before many others their own age anyways, even if they start a year later than average.

 

My oldest will officially be smarter (not saying he'll be wiser!) than me in a few years time I'm quite sure... and he's only 8 right now. My family is already starting to ask me what I think about letting him start college early. First of all, I'm like... yikes! He's only 8!! We have plenty of time! LOL... but then, really, it could be as little as eight years away :svengo: if he continues at the rate he's going! I really don't know how I feel about it yet... He is exactly like his dad so I do assume he will probably be the graduate school type of kid... I think, if it does pan out as my family thinks it will, I will want him to go to Jr. College while living at home and then move on to University for his upper level classes at the age that a person might normally go to college. But then, at the same time, I would be happy to see him travel the world for a year in there somewhere as well as it is already one of his dreams... that would be a nice gap year (as long as he pays his own way! :tongue_smilie:)

 

My second son is very mechanically inclined (he's more like me!) and academics are already torture for him... I see him being a skilled tradesman one day. (Again... who knows... he may just prove me wrong.) I will not push for early/late/any college if he doesn't need it for his career path. I don't want to push him into a mold that he is not made for.

 

Okay, I'm done with my pointless speculations.

 

I don't think early university is always a bad thing though... it just depends on the individual.

[tonya in sc]

We just decided last week to let our dd graduate early. She'll be 16.

She will be going to our local (15 min drive) tech school for her cosmetology license. She will be 19 when done with hair, nail, and aesthetics. We feel fine with this because most of the folks in her classes will be female, and she will actually have 2 friends with her. She knows our family does not approve of casual dating, esp. at 16, and she will live at home until she is done at tech.

BTW, I graduated HS at 17 (Jan. bday) having been a year "ahead" all my life (skipped kindergarten). Going to college was "the next thing", so it was no big deal to me or my parents at all.

At least 2 of my other dds will graduate at 17 as well.

great thread

 

Blessings,

tonya

[Doran]

I don't think early university is always a bad thing though... it just depends on the individual.

 

 

If it had been up to my father, I would have attended a small, two year, girls' school (I had been 18 for about a month upon entry to college) before heading off to university. It was my mother who felt I was ready for what I wanted, which was to go to UNC-CH. I'm sure I was not the most mature individual to ever set foot on that campus (:001_huh:), but I was a fast learner about some things, and I did just fine. Lived in a co-ed dorm, which was not my first choice but it worked out well enough, and settled into life on campus without issue. No, take that back. I struggled a bit first semester, and nearly failed a class, which scared the carp out of me. Every semester after that, I was a Dean's list student.

 

I will likely try to take a similar approach with my own children, gauging their readiness by what I know of them as whole people, not just their age. There is some chance that our oldest will bump up a grade as she enters high school this fall. If that proves to be what occurs, we will be facing this issue sooner than later, so it is a very relevant topic for us.

[Jenny in Florida]

Going to college was "the next thing", so it was no big deal to me or my parents at all.

 

You know, I was thinking that the short answer to the question posed in the original message--Why is early college such a bad thing?--is that people perceive it as a bad thing for the same reasons some people don't like homeschooling:

 

1. It's different from what they're used to, outside the norm.

2. To some people, it may imply that we think we or our kids are "better."

3. If some kids are successful doing something so different, it may make some other folks question their own approach.

 

Now, we all know perfectly well that our decision to homeschool does not necessarily imply that we think anyone who doesn't is "wrong." So, I'm a little surprised to find the same kinds of negativity in this crowd about what is, after all, just another individual educational path.

 

As someone else pointed out in a recent thread on a similar topic, you even hear some of the same kinds of arguments being voiced. I think that person (and I can't remember who it was--Sorry!) nailed it when she asked how "not being able to go to the bar with your friends" is different from "what about the prom?" Sure, going to college unusually early will mean that student has an experience that is different from "the norm." And I certainly understand that different makes people uncomfortable, but, at least as far as I can tell, "different" is not a synonym for "worse."

[Doran]

I had another set of thoughts regarding sending our hs-ed high school juniors and seniors to community college. This is not a first hand perspective, rather it comes from a dear friend whose 17 year old has graduated from "homeschooled" high school a year early after attending CC exclusively for the past year. This mother, my friend, offers an interesting (sobering?) discussion as to why she feels CC might have been detrimental to her daughter at 16, and why she *might* have chosen a traditional high school setting instead if she'd been able to do it over. Again, this is a very individual situation, so it may not apply to anyone else's kids -- it just gave me something to consider that had never occurred to me.

 

She said that sending her dd to CC at 16 put her dd into a situation of being surrounded by people who were considerably older and more independent. This, apparently, gave her dd the feeling that she should be allowed an equal amount of independence, which then created a lot of anger, tension, and fighting at home. At 16, this young lady was exceedingly mature in the eyes of all those around her. She was hired to tutor older students at the CC. She was respected by her teachers, and her fellow students thought she was much older than she really was. Translate those messages to her home environment, and she began to want far less parental control, began testing her curfews, questioning why she needed to tell her parents everything she was doing and when she was doing it...well, you get the picture. There were some VERY rocky times in that family which have now, thankfully, settled down a bit. But, to hear a lifelong homeschooling mother suggest that putting her 16 year old into a position of being treated like someone in her 20's at school was something she might avoid if she had it to again. That was a very eye opening discussion for me. Just thought I'd toss that into this thread as something else to chew on.

[genie]

 

1. It's different from what they're used to, outside the norm.

2. To some people, it may imply that we think we or our kids are "better."

3. If some kids are successful doing something so different, it may make some other folks question their own approach.

 

 

 

And just like homeschooling has become much more "normal" over the last decade, I'm seeing early college as becoming much more the norm. I say this because I live in a not-so-big-or-prosperous town, and yet we have two high schools here that you graduate from with AA degrees. I went to an open house for one of them recently, and the quote by the community college liaison was a statistic about how much high schoolers forget by the time they get to college, and how they have to take remedial classes. So now they will get college credit for the classes the first time around. (I'm not convinced that will make a difference in their retention, but oh well.)

 

The students take a full college load (at the college) their 11th and 12th grade years, and are also allowed one additional year, if needed, to complete their 60 credit hours. The local state university has already agreed to accept these students, and some will even be allowed to finish out their Bachelor's tuition-free. The advantage to this program over dual enrollment is that you aren't limited to the number of classes per semester.

 

I left the open house wondering if by the time my daughter is 18, will it be almost expected that she already have 2 years worth of college? It also makes it seem like people are starting to realize that the last two years of most high schools are largely wasted time. Are AP classes going to become a thing of the past, replaced by actually taking the college class? But either way, early college is becoming more and more "normal" and it will be interesting to watch where it goes.

 

But to answer the OP question, I graduated high school at 16 and went to a trade school that was largely attended by adults. I preferred the company of people older than myself, so it was pleasurable for me. I can't imagine the thought of having to complete two more years of high school at that age! But I also realize that I was far more independent than any of my friends were. And the same situation would not have worked for them. So it really is child-dependent. There is no single blanket answer. But I firmly believe that for some kids, it is absolutely the best choice.

[Jenny in Florida]

She said that sending her dd to CC at 16 put her dd into a situation of being surrounded by people who were considerably older and more independent. This, apparently, gave her dd the feeling that she should be allowed an equal amount of independence, which then created a lot of anger, tension, and fighting at home. At 16, this young lady was exceedingly mature in the eyes of all those around her. She was hired to tutor older students at the CC. She was respected by her teachers, and her fellow students thought she was much older than she really was. Translate those messages to her home environment, and she began to want far less parental control, began testing her curfews, questioning why she needed to tell her parents everything she was doing and when she was doing it...well, you get the picture. There were some VERY rocky times in that family which have now, thankfully, settled down a bit. But, to hear a lifelong homeschooling mother suggest that putting her 16 year old into a position of being treated like someone in her 20's at school was something she might avoid if she had it to again. That was a very eye opening discussion for me. Just thought I'd toss that into this thread as something else to chew on.

 

It's interesting, because I've heard a couple of similar stories from parents who have kids in early entrance programs. In fact, I had a parent from another online community in which I used to participate "warn" me about this when we considered allowing our daughter to take that route. This parent put me in touch with the mother of a girl who had just finished her first year at the same program to which my daughter ended up going, who had all kinds of complaints about the way her daughter behaved when she came home for the summer. And they sounded very similar to some of the concerns expressed here.

 

The mother was upset that her daughter, who had lived a fairly sheltered existence up until that point, came home knowing and apparently caring a lot more about popular culture and music than she did when she left, that she treated her parents with less respect, that she pushed boundaries and resisted her parents' attempts to control her . . .

 

At the time, I replied that, while we wouldn't really know until we experienced it, I had very few concerns about my daughter losing her head that way. She's always been very level-headed and clear-sighted. We've never outlawed popular culture or music or made it into something alluring because it is forbidden. She just has good taste and very little interest in all of that. We're also very close.

 

I'll admit that conversation made my husband and me a bit nervous. In fact, we shared our concerns with our daughter and made it clear up front that we would not consider that kind of behavior acceptable. For what it's worth, right then and there, on the spot, she agreed that was wrong. We talked about the fact that, in that situation, even if you consider yourself "beyond" being parented, you are in someone else's home and have a responsibility to be at least a good and polite guest.

 

Fast forward a full academic year. My daughter has been home for almost three weeks and life is good. We've had none of these kinds of problems. She does have a certain amount of additional freedom, just because it feels appropriate. For example, she sets her own hours, within reason. And we make no effort to censor what she watches on TV, other than having the set in the living room. Other than that, though, nothing feels terribly different. She's still the same good kid she was before she went to school.

 

My suspicion is that the root problems in cases like these are there before that child sets foot on a college campus.

[covenant.christian]

Our daughter started working on a college campus before she attended (at 18), met a non-Christian, and has moved out over the issue. This has been a pretty devastating situation, so I think I will show more caution before allowing my kids to go to a college, before they are actually attending it...

[Doran]

My suspicion is that the root problems in cases like these are there before that child sets foot on a college campus.

 

 

 

It's hard to ever know the "full" story of someone else's parent/child relationship, though I know this particular family quite well. And, yes, I'm certain there were other sources for the dd's anger and her desire for greater independence, and there were parenting styles that may or may not have been at play. However, I don't think *any* child is immune to significant changes in how they view their parents, and their parents' controls on their lives, significant and sudden. My personal experience with independence didn't happen until I was well past my teens. And, it was overdue and necessary. But, I'm sure it was no less shocking to my parents as it happened, kwim?

 

Interestingly, I ran into another lifelong homeschool mom this morning and got into discussion about kids "jumping" grades not knowing that this woman's oldest child had done just that. This mom indicated that if she had it to do over again, she wouldn't make that choice for her daughter.

 

I guess it's like any big decision - you have to consider not just the present moment but the possible repercussions of the choice a few years out.