The Board cited the previous 10 year tuition freeze and inflation as reasons for the increase. Republicans have been critical of the move, with some calling another freeze.
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AI is creating a rapidly changing environment for graduates heading to college or the workforce
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Students attending Universities of Wisconsin campuses could be paying more in tuition this upcoming school year.
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Matthew Jacobson found his calling in middle school history class.
As a sixth grader at St. John Vianney Catholic School in Brookfield, he voluntarily completed additional research projects and jumped at the chance to present to his classmates. He never saw the extra assignments as work — he was having fun. When Jacobson’s teacher told him he’d make a great educator himself, he set his sights on the profession. In high school, he participated in Elmbrook School District’s future teachers program and planned to enroll in university for his teaching degree.
But life had other plans. Several weeks before his high school graduation, Jacobson was forced to move out on his own. He picked up a cooking job to “pay the bills and survive.” The gig didn’t leave extra money or time for college.
“I didn’t really know how to get back into college and go meet my dream,” Jacobson said.
Two years later, he heard about a novel apprenticeship program, where future teachers earn money working in schools as they obtain their education and certifications.
“I was like, ‘That’s my way back in,’” he said.
State officials launched the program in 2024 to ease the educator shortage by offering students an alternative route to the profession — one where they don’t have to put their careers on pause while racking up student debt. Jacobson is one of the first eight teacher apprentices.
Today, Jacobson has returned to Elmbrook to serve as a classroom aide. In two years, he’ll have the proper training for the district to hire him as an elementary or middle school teacher.
But as participants reach the program’s halfway point, its future beyond this initial “pilot” phase is unclear — raising questions about whether apprenticeships will become a viable solution to Wisconsin’s struggle to find and keep educators.
While the route has been life-changing for students like Jacobson, program leaders are having trouble enticing school districts to take on more apprentices. Enrollment has ground to a halt; the two technical colleges involved don’t have any new students signed up to begin in the fall.
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development officials say whether the program continues or grows depends on if districts get on board and sponsor trainees to join up. But district leaders say a major hurdle is the cost — a key appeal of an apprenticeship is the employer paying them for the time they spend learning, but many public schools are already strapped for cash. Some want more funding tied to the program.
“(It’s) stalling a little bit,” said Trent Sorensen, a Fox Valley Technical College dean. “We don’t have any (students) coming in for the fall. … There’s plenty of time, but it’s not taking off like it did in other states, and it’s simply because of the funding.”
Wisconsin schools struggle to find enough teachers needed to lead classrooms — a problem largely fueled by poor retention and new workers moving to other states after graduating.
In 2024, Congress came through with some assistance: $570,000 in federal funds earmarked for establishing a teacher apprenticeship program in Wisconsin.
Officials from DWD, the Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and two universities teamed up to debut the pilot in January 2024. They praised the “earn-while-you-learn” approach to establishing a pipeline of workers: Districts could guarantee they’d have future teachers, while also filling lower-skilled jobs in the meantime.
Typically, aspiring teachers work a shorter classroom internship while studying for their bachelor’s degree and then complete a semester of student teaching after graduating. The apprenticeship is “taking that entire approach and flipping it on its head,” said Nick Abbott, senior program and policy analyst at the Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards — creating a potentially more accessible path to the profession.
“Traditional educator preparation programs can be expensive, as they often require unpaid student teaching, which might not be feasible for low-income students, nontraditional students, or individuals looking to change careers,” Gov. Tony Evers said when the program launched. “The new teacher apprenticeship pilot program will help address issues in turnover and retention, reduce barriers, and encourage young people to enter the field.”
Apprenticeships are becoming more common in Wisconsin in fields ranging from plumbing to nursing. Participation has hit record highs for the last four years. These gigs are far more common for hands-on jobs in the skilled trades than fields like education and health care, but that’s changing with initiatives like the teacher apprenticeship program.
Here’s how it works: A school district hires an apprentice, who enrolls at Fox Valley Technical College or Waukesha County Technical College for two years to complete a Foundations of Teacher Education associate’s degree. When finished, the student transfers to Lakeland University or the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater at Rock County to finish a bachelor’s degree.
Throughout those roughly four years of schooling, the apprentice works inside the classroom as an assistant for 32 hours each week and spends eight hours a week learning at college. The school district the person works for pays an hourly wage for those 40 total hours. When apprentices finish the training, they’re qualified to work as a classroom teacher.
“Nothing prepares you for doing this job, other than doing the job,” Jacobson said. “Being at a school working with kids is easily 10 times more important than any of the classes I’ve taken, and I get way better experience and much more value out of just doing it and learning through failure.”
As a way of incentivizing the program during its infancy, the eight students get half of their tuition costs reimbursed with federal grant funds.
Four districts participate in the pilot: Wauwatosa, Greendale, Elmbrook and Appleton. The districts are not required to pay for the remainder of the apprentice’s tuition — Elmbrook, a relatively wealthy district, was the only one that did.
State leaders also hope the apprenticeships might help with teacher retention. Teachers will start with four years of classroom management experience already under their belt, far more than usual. Plus, other teachers mentor them on the job. That essentially eliminates the difficult experience of being a first-year teacher, said Appleton Area School District Chief Human Resources Officer Julie King.
“Managing a classroom and the curriculum and all the demands of the job is very overwhelming after having maybe 18 weeks of student teaching experience,” King said. “To learn alongside a professional that has been in the career, knows all the ins and outs, has skill sets and strategies to work with students – to have that benefit of working alongside somebody like that for four years, you’re much, much better prepared.”
Given these promises, teacher apprenticeships have recently exploded nationwide — 45 states have brought programs online in the last few years. They vary widely in their funding approaches and in the costs to districts and students. States have often looked to Tennessee, the country’s first program, as a standout model. The state’s program, launched in 2020, now helps fund 600 new teacher trainees annually at no cost to the apprentices.
In his Foundations of Reading class last fall, Jacobson learned about phonological and phonemic awareness, or the ability to recognize distinct parts of a word — a key skill for learning how to read. Using what he learned, he started running his own reading support group for students needing extra help.
“The second you learn something, I don’t have to wait two years before I actually apply that knowledge to my job,” Jacobson said. “No, I’m applying it that same day or the next day, which then makes it stick a lot more.”
The program gets high marks from trainees and schools. So why aren’t more signing up?
Money. Both school districts and apprentices are struggling to afford it.
The four districts that already have apprentices are waiting until their current students graduate to decide whether to add more, Abbott said.
“I want to stress that the apprenticeship model itself remains available to all school employers in the state who wish to adopt it,” Abbott said. “It comes down to finding partners.”
But getting more of Wisconsin’s 400-plus districts to bite has been difficult.
Sorensen, the Fox Valley Tech dean, said the college isn’t seeing interest from districts because many are contending with too-tight budgets. School leaders have long argued the state’s funding system hasn’t kept up with rising costs, which, as Wisconsin Watch recently reported, has resulted in a recent wave of school closures, layoffs and budget cuts.
That’s made it hard for districts to pay for the hours when trainees are in college, and not working in the classroom.
“It’s challenging for school districts to be able to build in that release time. We did hear that, and that’s really understandable,” said Dena Constantineau, Waukesha County Tech’s associate dean of education and human services. “I mean, they really rely on their people, and so they need them in the classroom.”
Even with the discount from the federal grant, tuition can be costly. For example, the average annual tuition costs at least $5,900 for the technical college portion and about $6,000 for UW-Whitewater at Rock County. That means the leftover cost to apprentices could still be upwards of $12,000.
Plus, the federal funds that helped launch the pilot run out next March, so there could be even less tuition assistance for future apprentices.
The Appleton Area School District would love to put more students into the program, “if there was funding” to entice participants, King said. The district couldn’t afford to give students more tuition assistance, which hampered participation.
“The unknown for us moving forward is there is no state funding. If there’s other opportunities for that tuition relief for the individual, that’s really what entices people to engage in that program,” King said.
“The question on the future really is, ‘Where is the funding and the structures going to be in the future to make sure that it’s a viable option moving forward?’” King said. “‘That it reduces the financial barrier? That it’s accessible?’”
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
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An apprenticeship aiming to ease Wisconsin’s teacher shortage is ‘stalling.’ Will it catch on? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Connor Champion, president of Austin Christian University in Texas, addresses students at the school. Some of the nation’s biggest megachurches are getting into the college business, prioritizing hands-on job training and church culture over a more traditional liberal arts focus. (Courtesy of Austin Christian University)
In the heart of the Bible Belt, a small Methodist college graduated its final class in May 2024, shutting its doors after 168 years.
Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, was a Christian private liberal arts school that counted among its graduates members of Congress, famous musicians, Pulitzer Prize winners and the former executive editor of The New York Times. Yet it had been unable to endure years of financial losses.
About 15 minutes southeast, toward the Birmingham suburbs, the inaugural freshman class at Highlands College was finishing its first year that same spring. The private Christian school, which has just gotten permission from the state to award bachelor’s degrees, was born out of the nondenominational Church of the Highlands, the biggest religious congregation in the state and one of the largest in the nation. It claims a weekly attendance of 60,000 across more than two dozen campuses in Alabama and Georgia.
Long-established, religiously affiliated small colleges such as Birmingham-Southern are battling the same existential pressures weighing on non-religious liberal arts colleges nationwide: declining enrollment, rising operational costs and a deepening skepticism of higher education among families who fear ideological influence on their children or question whether steep tuition and fees are worth it.
But a different model of Christian education is on the upswing: Some of the nation’s biggest megachurches are getting into the college business, prioritizing job training and church culture over traditional liberal arts. A franchise-style model from a Christian university in Florida has made it easier than ever for them to launch.
The new schools are attracting big donors and growing their enrollment through a built-in base of believers — and some are pushing to access public funding.
States including Florida, Georgia and Minnesota have opened their state financial assistance programs to religious colleges in recent years. The change mirrors a broader push already underway in K-12 education, where states have funneled billions to religious schools.
Many of these new colleges eschew the regional accrediting that’s standard for more established universities. Some pursue alternative accreditation from religious nonprofits that may or may not be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
That means students’ college credits may not transfer to other schools or to graduate programs. And the costs of non-accredited coursework aren’t eligible for federal financial assistance offered through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
Supporters of the megachurch-affiliated schools say they’re a good option for students who want practical training for specific jobs, generally in ministry or business. They say students benefit from being closely connected to their local faith community.
But some experts question whether the schools’ lack of traditional accreditation could limit students’ options after graduation, or whether their close ties to one church could have an outsized impact on the school’s accountability and transparency.
“Public funding is something that everybody should be concerned about, no matter your politics, no matter your religion,” said Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University in upstate New York who has written books on the history of Christian education in America.
“And I think it’s everyone’s business if there are schools that are restricting the chances of students in a way that students aren’t aware of what they’re getting into.”
Schools such as Highlands College are growing their physical footprints with big donations from heavy hitters. A $20 million donation from the Green family, whose patriarch David Green founded the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, funded Highlands’ first two residence halls.
In March, 3-year-old Austin Christian University — born out of Texas-based Celebration Church, which has more than 23,000 members — broke ground on a $50 million complex thanks to a donation of the same size from Roger Bringmann, a vice president at California-based tech giant Nvidia.
The schools’ focus more closely aligns with many conservatives’ educational goals. Republicans in statehouses across the country have pushed to increase Christianity’s influence and presence in education, while President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed relaxing accreditation rules.
In Florida last month, Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier declared the state won’t enforce its constitutional ban on funding religious institutions, opening the door for state-funded scholarships for Christian colleges.
The newer Christian schools also may benefit from battles fought by their older counterparts.
Last year, Georgia agreed to allow religious colleges to participate in state-funded financial aid programs after a 64-year-old Christian college sued the state over its law that barred theological schools from public tuition assistance.
And after two century-old colleges filed suit in Minnesota last year, a federal judge struck down a 2023 state law that barred religious colleges from a state-funded dual enrollment program that lets high school students enroll in college credit courses tuition-free.
“We’ve done lobbying at the state level, working with the state legislators to get access to things like in-state, need-based grants,” said Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Southeastern University, in Lakeland, Florida, which has partnered with more than 200 churches across the country to help them launch colleges. “Depending on the need in each state and the availability of state funding, we try to access every scholarship dollar that we can for students.”
Many megachurch schools offer financial aid. But tuition and fees at more established church-affiliated schools can run into the mid-five figures — on par with their private college counterparts, but far above in-state tuition at big public universities.
At Highlands College, tuition, housing and fees total about $42,000 per year. The school, which focuses on training for the ministry, says 100% of its students receive scholarships. In-state tuition, housing and fees at the University of Alabama cost $28,196 per year. At Birmingham-Southern, the year it closed, those same costs totaled about $36,500.
But costs vary. At Elevation College, which plans to welcome its first class this fall and was launched by North Carolina megachurch Elevation Church, the tuition, housing and fees are about $19,936 per year. VOUS College of Ministry in Miami, based at one of the fastest-growing megachurches in Florida, charges $12,136 per year in tuition and fees, though that doesn’t include housing.
Unlike more traditional schools that are affiliated with an entire denomination, these newer schools are often deeply entwined with the leadership at just one megachurch.
At Austin Christian, for example, the college president is Connor Champion, the son of Celebration Church’s founding pastors, Joe and Lori Champion.
Public funding is something that everybody should be concerned about, no matter your politics, no matter your religion.
– Adam Laats, professor of education and history at Binghamton University
Last year, Church of the Highlands founding pastor Chris Hodges stepped down from his role there to focus on being chancellor at Highlands College, and tapped the college’s president to become the church’s new head pastor.
Some critics say that when schools are closely tied to one church, rather than to an entire denomination, the church’s leadership and finances have an outsized impact on the school.
“You can end up with this insular, sometimes authoritarian power structure, which I don’t mean to say is unique to religious schools, but it is one of the hazards of this kind of institutional structure,” said Laats.
But having a college tied to a local church also can boost its credibility and accountability within that faith community, said Rick Ostrander, a longtime Christian college administrator who is currently the executive director for the Michigan Christian Study Center at the University of Michigan.
“There’s always the danger with new markets and new models that develop some bad actors or just some unhealthy situations,” Ostrander said, “but I think that’s less likely in this area than some other quote-unquote professional areas.”
The Highlands model — practical, church-based job training paired with academic courses offered through an accredited partner university — is spreading, in part, thanks to a franchise-style approach from a Florida university that has made launching a church-based college easier than ever.
Southeastern University in central Florida is a private school affiliated with Assemblies of God, one of the world’s largest Pentecostal Christian denominations. Southeastern is accredited by a federally recognized regional accreditation body, and it’s one of the fastest-growing private nonprofit colleges in the country, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
One reason for that growth is it has partnered with more than 200 churches, including some of the nation’s largest, to offer accredited Southeastern degrees through local startup colleges. Some of these church colleges, such as Highlands, have hundreds of students; some just a handful. Southeastern provides the academics while the church provides the practicum classes.
About a third of the 13,600 students at Southeastern are at schools affiliated with their network partner churches, said Fitzgerald, who is chief of staff for Kent Ingle, the president of Southeastern.
The university helps the church colleges line up curriculum and instructors, he said, and helps secure the necessary state approvals.
“We make sure that their courses are up to accreditation standards,” Fitzgerald said. “We make sure that the faculty they have are well-qualified, and we’re able to provide a stamp of approval on pretty much what they’re already doing, and so it’s a match made in heaven, if you will.”
By offering educational degrees, a church can create a pipeline of future staffers who are steeped in its culture, a priority for megachurches intent on preserving their brand.
And it gives churches additional workers who run conferences, staff events or manage social media, all for college credit rather than wages. That can be a boon for high-revenue megachurches that rely on an army of volunteers.
Fitzgerald said he’s not aware that Southeastern has ever said no to a church that approached it about becoming a partner site. Revenue from student tuition and fees is split between Southeastern and the church college.
One of Southeastern University’s biggest success stories has been Highlands College in Birmingham. The school began offering unaccredited ministry courses in 2011 before joining the Southeastern network in 2017.
In 2023, Highlands was awarded its own accreditation by the Association for Higher Education, a network of Christian schools that has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. It now offers more than half a dozen bachelor’s degree programs.
This fall, the college will launch a new business school and a bachelor’s degree in business leadership. The Dunn School of Business is named in honor of the former CEO of a faith-based investment group that has invested millions in a church-planting network co-founded by Chris Hodges, the chancellor of Highlands College.
In Texas, Austin Christian University is focused entirely on business education, offering a bachelor’s of business administration degree through its partnership with Southeastern. Tuition, fees and housing are $35,000 per year. In addition to academic classes, students attend weekly sessions with Christian business executives and can work with Christian entrepreneurs on business projects in a “startup accelerator” program.
The business focus could help protect the school from coming changes at the federal level.
The Trump administration has been working to overhaul higher education, including proposing a new rule that would require undergraduate programs to show their graduates earn more than the median earnings of similarly aged adults with only a high school diploma, or risk losing access to federal student loans and grants.
Some Christian higher ed organizations, such as the Association for Biblical Higher Education and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, worry these provisions would have a disproportionately negative effect on Christian institutions, particularly those that train for traditionally lower-paying ministry or church roles.
Fitzgerald of Southeastern said he isn’t concerned that the federal overhaul will harm the newest crop of church colleges.
“We believe that as students begin to really reevaluate the return on investment of higher education, we think that unique models for education like this one are the ones that are going to thrive and succeed,” Fitzgerald said.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequiera contributed to this story. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat, holds a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 2026. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats, advocates, students and leaders on Wednesday blasted attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to do away with funding for minority-serving institutions in higher education.
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono led a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol that called on the administration to fully fund and protect the more than 800 minority-serving institutions, or MSIs, which enroll millions of students of color. Many are from low-income households or are the first in their families to attend college.
“Donald Trump is doing all he can basically to dismantle support for education in this country, and what is happening to minority-serving institutions is part of this all-out attack,” the Hawaii Democrat said.
“Under the false pretense of addressing discrimination, this regime is limiting access to higher education for underserved and underrepresented groups, and there are millions of students who are being served by these programs,” she added.
Along with advocates, leaders and students, Hirono was joined by fellow Democrats: Sen. Alex Padilla, chair of the Senate Hispanic-Serving Institutions Caucus; Rep. Mark Takano, first vice chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; Rep. Juan Vargas of California, of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; and Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois, of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Padilla, of California, said MSIs are “better training the future leaders, entrepreneurs (and) servants” that communities need.
“That’s what we’re standing up for. That’s what we’re fighting for, and that’s (why) we’re calling on Republican colleagues to join us, to push back on the threats of this administration and maintain our decades-long steadfast support of minority-serving institutions for the interest of these young people, their families, their communities and our country.”
Takano, also of California, said “Congress funded these programs, and we will fight for them, and they cannot impound the funds.”
He added that “Congress has the power of the purse, and we will make sure we hold this administration accountable.”
Trump — who has sought to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies in schools — has proposed eliminating funding for minority-serving institutions, totaling $354 million, as part of his fiscal 2027 budget request.
The U.S. Department of Education in September gutted and reprogrammed $350 million in discretionary funds that support MSIs, over claims that the programs for Black, Asian, Indigenous and Hispanic students and more are “racially discriminatory.”
The agency soon after moved to redirect $495 million in additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities, along with tribal colleges.
The Justice Department in December issued an opinion finding several grant programs for minority-serving institutions to be “unconstitutional.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon concurred with the opinion, and the agency said later that month it was “currently evaluating the full impact” of the opinion on affected programs.
The president signed into law in February a spending package that funds the Education Department at $79 billion this fiscal year and also “increases funding for all Title III and V programs that support HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal colleges, and other minority-serving institutions,” per Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats’ summary.
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A more than half-century-old fundraiser for the UW-Stevens Point student-run radio station, the World’s Largest Trivia Contest is a longstanding family event for student Frank Ross. Now Ross writes the questions for this trivia marathon. Generations of his family play on.
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When University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh lecturer Paul Sager logs onto Zoom every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to teach his composition course, he asks his students to paste in the chat what emoji they feel like that day.
If it’s cold outside, they might send a snowflake, or if they’re feeling motivated, a rocket ship.
“They find that really fun and ice-breaking,” Sager said. “Feeling connected to your professor, I believe, is an extremely important part of being invested in a course, especially when it’s at the college level.”
That’s especially important for Sager, who has never met most of his students in the flesh, and likely never will.
At UW-Oshkosh, high schoolers make up nearly half of the student body. Many of them live hours away and never actually step foot on campus, instead taking the college courses from their high schools.
It’s an increasingly popular dynamic as dual enrollment classes — where high schoolers simultaneously earn high school and college credit — soar in popularity and the typical college-aged population shrinks. But UW-Oshkosh enrolls more high schoolers than any university in the state, an endeavor that’s transforming the college’s identity.
The approach has helped UW-Oshkosh combat the big enrollment declines Wisconsin universities have seen in recent years.
But as more colleges tap into the dual enrollment trend, the state’s fourth-largest UW campus is facing stiffer competition for these students. On top of that, few of them currently continue their education at UW-Oshkosh after high school. College leaders want that to change.
“As the competitive landscape that we operate in gets more competitive, and as the number of total high school students in Wisconsin continues to go down, it’s going to be more important that we get more and more of these students to choose UW-O as their four-year solution, as well,” said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Edwin Martini.
Dual enrollment is now rapidly taking root across the country, but UW-Oshkosh was ahead of the curve when it launched its program 50 years ago.
Today, over 6,500 high schoolers get a jump start on college through the university’s Cooperative Academic Partnership Program, dubbed “CAPP.” In most cases, UW-Oshkosh authorizes qualified high school teachers — typically those with graduate degrees in their subject areas — to teach CAPP courses at their own schools.
Just five UW-Oshkosh professors, Sager included, teach courses to high schoolers virtually. This allows them to reach more rural schools that otherwise lack access to dual enrollment courses, often because they don’t have qualified instructors or enough resources.
“Given the opportunity to teach these courses, I jumped on it … It’s definitely a calling,” Sager said.
The university charges high schools about half the typical tuition costs for the classes. Students considered economically disadvantaged by the state get added discounts. Each school district decides how it passes the cost of books and tuition onto students.
If students choose not to attend UW-Oshkosh after graduation, their credits can transfer to 200 other colleges.
Over the past decade, the number of students doing dual enrollment through UW-Oshkosh has nearly doubled. While that mirrors nationwide growth, UW-Oshkosh has leaned fully into the trend, hoping to attract as many students as possible across Wisconsin — and, in some cases, beyond.
“The simple truth is, if Oshkosh didn’t do it, somebody else would,” Sager said. “It’s something that I believe at Oshkosh they’ve really understood as not only a moneymaker, but just an opportunity.”
To attract students, program leaders call schools to tell them about the program and advertise at teacher conferences around the state. But largely, word of mouth and its status as the state’s oldest help win school leaders’ trust. CAPP is the only Wisconsin program accredited by the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, an organization holding universities accountable to offering dual enrollment courses as rigorous as normal college courses.
“We’ve had, more than ever, people reaching out to us to get involved,” said CAPP Outreach Specialist Sarah Adelson.
Today, 45% of UW-Oshkosh students are high schoolers, a phenomenon more common at community colleges than universities. Statewide, high schoolers are just 10% of university enrollment, compared to 1 in 3 community college students.
The dual enrollment growth has been, in many ways, a saving grace for the college.
Like other Wisconsin universities, UW-Oshkosh has lost thousands of traditional college students — those enrolling after high school graduation — over the past decade. Dual enrollment has helped offset that loss. Overall enrollment is down 9%, but without the high school students, enrollment would be down closer to 36%.
“For us, in part, it is a service. It is something that we’re proud of doing and providing these opportunities to students,” Martini said. “But we do consider our dual enrollment portfolio very much part of our strategic enrollment management portfolio.”
Walking across the UW-Oshkosh campus, it’s not immediately obvious how much the student body has changed in recent years.
Classrooms are still filled with what many would consider “typical” college students. Sidewalks bustle with students walking to class. Finding parking can still be competitive.
But in recent years, as more students take classes without setting foot on campus, the university has undergone some noticeable changes: The campus-run bookstore closed. Satellite locations in Appleton and Fond du Lac shut down because of enrollment declines. During a budget crunch, leaders offered voluntary retirement to roughly 50 faculty. And three dorm buildings are slated for demolition, as they no longer need as much space to house students living on campus.
Teagan Massey-Plamann, a senior at Menasha High School, takes UW-Oshkosh’s dual enrollment courses from about 20 minutes away but has visited campus only once.
“It may not be the experience of being on campus and everything, but I still kind of get to see what the curriculums will look like, and how much studying I’ll need to do,” Massey-Plamann said.
As dual enrollment continues to expand, it raises broader questions about what will define the college experience. While the typical experience most think of is by no means dead, Sager said, it seems pretty rare nowadays.
“All of them, I think, also seek that personal connection with faculty and wanting to have an on-campus experience in one way, shape or form … I don’t know if there is a ‘definition’ for what a college experience even is anymore,” Sager said.
For some, the experience of being a professor has shifted, too — teaching high schoolers is a different task than teaching students a few years older, Sager said.
“It really is about trying to meet them at their level and understand that, and also apply a little bit of pedagogical changes, so that the assignments mean more to them, and they feel more invested in it,” Sager said.
When Massey-Plamann graduates from high school this spring, she’ll already have a head start on college, thanks to her UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment courses in statistics, calculus and biology.
“It’s just getting me in the mindset that I’m going to be doing more classes like this next year,” the aspiring art therapist said. “They’re not going to be just classes where I can just sit and do nothing because I get all my work done really quickly. It’s getting me prepared for that time management.”
That head start will save her both money and stress as she heads to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota to play softball.
Like Massey-Plamann, most UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment students don’t continue their education there after high school. Only about 10% do.
University leaders want to change that.
While Adelson said students historically “just come to us,” that’s changing as other Wisconsin colleges try to ride the dual enrollment wave. At the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, high schoolers now make up about a third of enrollment. Just 20 miles away from UW-Oshkosh, half of the 8,000 students at Moraine Park Technical College are still in high school.
In response, UW-Oshkosh leaders are stepping up recruitment efforts — they’re offering classes other universities don’t, awarding at least $1,000 scholarships to those who enroll the following fall and funding more campus visits for high schoolers.
But UW-Oshkosh leaders acknowledge there don’t seem to be many students left to go after — the pool of college-bound students may already be tapped. CAPP Director Margaret Hostetler said their next push is for students who aren’t planning to attend college at all. They wonder if dual enrollment could change their mind.
The university is also ramping up advising services, pointing students toward courses that will actually benefit them in the future.
“We don’t want students just taking every single dual enrollment credit they can because that’s not necessarily saving them time or money,” Hostetler said. “To save time and money, you have to have a class that is going to transfer as a course that you will need in your field of study.”
They’ve ramped up marketing efforts to remind dual enrollment students that “they are Titans,” Martini said, mailing them branded T-shirts, banners and posters for teachers to hang in their high school classrooms.
“What we want is them to have a great experience, and then that builds their affinity with UW-O,” Martini said. “And then they say … ‘Now I want to go to Oshkosh. Now I want to be a Titan.’”
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
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At one Wisconsin university, nearly half the students are still in high school is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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