The Coolest Coast has many opportunities for middle and high school students to get a head start on their college and career paths. These programs are revolutionary, and many have only been offered for a few years thus far. There are 3 very prominent early college programs within Manitowoc County: The University Of Wisconsin Green Bay’s Rising Phoenix Program, Lakeshore Technical College’s Start College Now Program, and NEWAHEC’s Healthcare Path 2 Practice program.
The former two programs take shape as amazing opportunities for students in their sophomore and junior years respectively (Note: the Rising Phoenix application is open to sophomores only). Both of these programs offer high school and college credits with no financial burden on the student or their family. With the UWGB program, a student is fully enrolled at the University via either the local campus, or virtually if the student has online classes. If there are classes at the high school that the student still wishes to take, they may, and will then effectively be dual-enrolled. This is a great scenario for getting the feel of college while still maintaining regular contact with one’s high school peers.
LTC’s Start College Now program is fairly similar, though it requires the student to be a junior, rather than a sophomore. LTC also offers opportunities entirely through the high school which then require no juggling of different campuses. These take the form of high school classes, which are typically more advanced than the other standard high school classes, and offer college credits at LTC if completed with a good grade.
The third program, from NEWAHEC, is a little different. Rather than going somewhere to take a class for college credit, NEWAHEC offers six online courses which are self-guided, and are designed to help students who may not be sure of what they want to do in the future. NEWAHEC’s program is only available to their members, though making an account is free. One point of stipulation for Path 2 Practice, when compared to the other 2 programs, is that it does not offer any college credits, and instead, will provide the student with a certificate of completion to illustrate their newfound knowledge in the field they studied.
These programs are far and away some of the greatest opportunities for students to partake in. With the rising cost of living, saving on college is something that everyone on the Coolest Coast® can be happy about.
