Regents looking at shortfall on courses

The number of high school students taking college courses keeps going up, but the level of state funding hasn't kept pace. It costs about $60 per credit hour for each course a student takes, but the State Board of Regents Friday estimated the state is kicking in between $31 and $37.

"Whatever it is, it's a substantial shortfall for our institutions," said regent James Jardine. About 25,000 students are taking about 150,000 credit hours.

Where schools have been taking up the slack in a lack of funding, legislation may be in the works that would require parents to pay for a portion of those classes, which are in addition to the regular schedule of courses taken by a high school student.

The idea behind concurrent enrollment is that students are able to more quickly earn their college degree. Jardine, however, raised the questions of whether the program is achieving its objective and if the quality of the program is suffering because of the funding gap.