Broken Arrow Public Schools Partners With NSU, TCC For 'Early College High School' Program

Students in Broken Arrow Public Schools can get a big head start on their college careers thanks to a partnership with Northeastern State University Broken Arrow and Tulsa Community College.

It's called Early College High School, and it's a program that takes incoming 9th and 10th graders and places them in college prep classes, while 11th and 12th graders take college classes so that by the time these students graduate high school, they can have earned their associate's degree in liberal arts.

Early College High School is currently in its fourth year, initially starting with just a handful of students but has since grown to about 300 students today. Jada Dunbar is a 10th grader at Early College High School trying to earn her associate's degree. Coming into the program, she expected it to be pretty difficult, but she said that it was not as daunting as it seemed.

"I expected it to be really, really hard but actually, it's not as hard as you would believe because the teachers are so easy and they will work with you with whatever you're struggling with," Dunbar said.

Early College High School allows students to essentially skip a lot of undergraduate classes once they start at a four-year college and jump right into upper-level courses.

"This allows the students to kind of bypass those basics that everybody takes when they start their four-year university, and they jump right into those 3000 and 4000 level classes," Julie Sunderland, the Early College High School principal said.

This program also gives these students that participate in part of their college education at a fraction of the cost of full tuition.

"Because of the state incentives to support concurrent enrollment, they can get an associate’s degree for about $1,200 which is a much-reduced rate compared to paying full tuition," Pamela Fly, NSU's Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs said.

While these students may be starting their college careers a little earlier than normal, it doesn't mean that they are going to miss out on the full college experience.

"The nice thing for this program is they are on the same campus, so they move from freshman and sophomores here in our business building to being juniors and seniors taking those concurrent courses just across the way in the education building," Fly said.