More Lancaster County students are seeking post-high-school education, but cost and family expectations sometimes keep their numbers down.
By Robyn Meadows
Published Apr 19, 2006 13:24
And high tuition is not the main obstacle.
The report, “A Rising Tide: The Current State of Higher Education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” finds that rural students are less likely to pursue higher education because they are more likely to come from a lower-performing school, college attendance is not part of their tradition, and they don’t have higher education institutions nearby.
Lancaster County’s rate of college attendance falls in the middle of the state’s statistics, with 63.3 percent to 76.4 percent of high school students planning to enroll in post-secondary education, the report states.
Among their options for post-high-school education locally are Harrisburg Area Community College, Millersville University and Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology.
Local school officials, however, say that in the past five years, more of their high school students are enrolling in higher education — thanks to the boost in vocational and technical programs available here.
Jan Mindish, principal of Penn Manor High School, said that in 1991, 47 percent of her high school’s students went to college. For the class of 2005, that figure rose to 75 percent.
“We have a number of students who go right to work on the family farm, and we have almost 20 percent of our seniors who are full-day vo-tech students,” Mindish said.
Solanco High School Principal Gerard Rosolie claims the gap is closing for his school.
In 2001, the school saw 53.5 percent of its students enroll in a two-year or four-year program. Last year, that figure jumped to 64.4 percent.
Solanco, like other districts, works with the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board to teach students the importance of furthering their education.
Many students are not cut out for a four-year college, but they should consider pursuing a two-year technical program, which can offer high-paying salaries, said Scott Sheely, executive director of WIB.
He said the bigger problem is that nearly half of the students who go to college quit.
“The concern that I have is for them to go off and study English when they could be very successful in a technical situation,” he said.
Eastern Lancaster County School District is still concerned about the numbers of its students moving on to higher education, Superintendent Saundra Hoover said.
The school has a number of high-achieving students who are not choosing to attend college, she said.
About 36 to 45 percent of the district’s high school graduates go on to college.
A growing number are choosing to enroll at the Lancaster County Career and Technology Center.
“We encourage that if it’s an appropriate, well-thought-out career path, but we do not want to be sending students to the career center just because they don’t know what they want to do,” she said.
So her school district has worked hard to teach students about options, from vocational to technical programs.
And Hoover thinks, contrary to the report, that cost plays a major role.
“Many of our constituents do not enjoy the resources that a lot of other families have in the county,” she said.
The report — sponsored by The Education Policy and Leadership Center and The Learning Alliance for Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania — draws on information from a variety of sources including a survey of 519 high school graduates and data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census reports.
Berwood Yost and G. Terry Madonna of the Floyd Institute’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College conducted the survey.
Madonna said, “Make no mistake about it, cost is important.”
The report shows that just 4 to 8 percent of young adults — mostly from rural communities or of African American or Hispanic American backgrounds — do not go on to college because of price.
Outweighing cost concerns are a school’s proximity to a student’s home, course offerings and family expectations for higher education, Madonna said.
Yost offered this solution: Create education policies that focus on gaps, not just on a “broad policy that aims to reduce the cost for everyone.”
