Students contemplate between 2 year and 4 year colleges

With the cost of education rising, two-year colleges could start becoming a lot more at­tractive.

It would seem like an op­portunity for students looking for affordable options to con­tinue their educations after high school.

The University of Louisiana of Monroe has entered into agreements with Delta, Bossier Parish and Hinds community colleges.

It states that general education courses taken at the community colleges will fall perfectly in line with core classes offered at the four year university.

The idea is that students who, for whatever reason, cannot enter or are not ready to enter ULM can take their first two years (approximately 60 hours) at a junior college.

Upon completion of their hours at the community col­lege, they can transfer as juniors to the university without ever missing a beat and still graduate in four years.

Carl Thameling, head of the Communications department at ULM, assisted the university by helping write a curriculum that two year colleges could follow.

Because instructors like Thameling are writing the cur­riculums for the junior colleges, university administrators feel that students will be every bit as prepared to take 3000 and 4000 level classes as the students who took their basics at ULM.

“We’re thinking they’ll be fine,” said Thameling about in­coming junior college students.

“Public Speaking, for exam­ple, they could take at their col­lege and then transfer the credit here.”

These two-and-two agree­ments not only provide an easier path for students to transfer into ULM, but the hope from uni­versity administration is that university populations will also increase.

While the two year schools may meet specific social, finan­cial, educational or distance needs, an easy transition to a four year school may encourage more students to consider get­ting a four year degree.

The result would be an in­flux of students into the general population.

This would allow for more in­coming funds to the university and more graduates being pro­duced by the university.

Not only could these two-and-two agreements benefit the university, but students strapped for cash could also benefit by first enrolling in a two year col­lege.

According to data found on the websites of each four col­leges involved (ULM, Delta, BPCC and Hinds), the tuition differences are significant.

The total tuition and fees re­quired to pay for one semester of school at any of the three ju­nior colleges roughly equates to half that required by ULM.

This means that students of junior colleges who then trans­fer after two years to ULM would pay half the money as students who spent four years at ULM.

Meanwhile they would still, theoretically, receive the same education.