Students who need a second chance — or a third or a fourth — can earn high school and college credits through Durham Technical Community College‘s Gateway to College program, reports the Herald-Sun in North Carolina.
Northern High School, Hillside, Durham Performance Learning Center. None of them worked for Charity Philips.
“I was going through a lot of drama,” the 18-year-old recalled of her years in high school. “I was going through boyfriend drama. I got into fights. I was an idiot.”
She felt, she said, like “I didn’t need school anymore.”
Far behind in credits, she dropped out. Last fall, Philips enrolled in Gateway. “ They push you to keep going,” she said. “That’s what I needed.”
Students need one to three years to complete Gateway to College, which is a national program. Durham Tech’s first graduates are expected this fall.
Auntais Faulkner dropped out of high school at 16. Three years later, feeling “more ready for school,” he enrolled at Durham Tech. “Now I know I can do the college thing,” he told the Herald-Sun.
Philips ultimately plans to get a master’s degree in video game design. Faulkner wants to get his bachelor’s in business before getting a master’s in theater.
It’s great that Gateway has lured these drop-outs back to school, but I’d be more optimistic about their futures if they’d set realistic goals. They both aspire to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The odds of success — video game design requires programming skills, not just the ability to play games — are incredibly low. (My nephew, an excellent student, just sweated his way to a bachelor’s in computer science and video-game design and is teaching himself a new computer language in order to qualify for a starter job at a game company.)
Students who aim high and miss usually end up with no credential at all. Gateway should urge these very high-risk students to go for an achievable credential, such as a six-month or one-year vocational certificate, before setting off on the long, rocky path to a bachelor’s degree.
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[...] Drop-outs get a second chance to finish high school and earn community college credits — but are they aiming at realistic goals? [...]