College Courses in High School: Is Your Child Ready for Higher Education?

An increasing number of high schools across America are now offering college courses for students. They are either meant to prepare the student for college, or to get undergraduate courses out of the way. In either case, students come home with a backpack full of books and papers, and many have little time for anything other than school and homework. Is your child ready for higher education, or is it better to just 'be a kid'?

The most important thing that a parent can do is monitor his or her child's stress level when taking college courses in high school. It's easy to assume that moodiness and short tempers are simply the result adolescent angst, but could it be something more? The stress of higher education is often too much for teenagers to bear, and they take out their frustration on friends and family. This doesn't mean your child isn't smart. It has nothing to do with intelligence.

"My parents only allowed me to take two advanced courses this year," says Chrystal Mendelssohn, a junior at James E. Taylor High School. "Last year I got so burnt out and they didn't want me to go through it again." When asked why she's interested in college courses in high school, Chrystal says, "I heard that some of the colleges, like A&M, have freshman weed-out classes, and I wanted to avoid them if possible."

Some of the college courses in high school are taught by community college professors who come to the high school campus for a couple of hours each day, while others are taught by regular high-school teachers. Either way, the classes can become too much to handle if students aren't prepared. This is especially true if the high school doesn't have high expectations for its students.

If your child wants to take college courses in high school, there are a few things you should consider:

Preparation. Has your child been prepared through other high school experiences for this greater challenge? Some schools offer advanced placement classes for college preparation, and sometimes these are helpful for students with high scholarly ambitions. To jump directly from regular classes to college-level courses, however, can be dangerous.