By: Alvin Wilson 
Staffwriter

Oregon is expected to see a dramatic increase in the number of high school seniors who enroll in community college due to something called the Oregon Promise.

The Oregon Promise is a new program that aims to help high school seniors attend community college for as little as $50 per term by having the state cover some of the bill, all at little expense to the taxpayer.

In order to qualify for the Oregon Promise, high school seniors and students completing a GED must have a GPA of at least 2.5 and be Oregon residents for at least 12 months before applying.

The senior classes of 2016 will be the first to enjoy this program, and nearly 20 percent of public and private high school seniors say they will, according to the Oregonian.

For four-year colleges, this could be good or bad news.

Bob Brew, Oregon’s director of student access and completion, told the Oregonian that some students who would have otherwise gone to a four-year college might be persuaded by the offer to attend community college.

Dave McDonald, Associate Provost of the Strategic Planning and Options Committee (SPOC) at Western, thinks that the Oregon Promise has the potential to affect admissions at Western.

“We may lose some freshman. We hope if we lose them that it’s only a delay and that they go to a community college, have a good experience, then transfer to us and complete their degree. That may become the ‘normal’ path,” McDonald said.

But he acknowledges that it is still too early to be sure.

“It’s in its first year, so all we can do right now is speculate as to what the impact will be state-wide. Certainly anything that provides students with additional resources to go to college is a good thing, and Oregon definitely needs to have more educated individuals.”

McDonald said he has hope for this program, but he doesn’t see it translating into increased admissions for universities.

“The real challenge is that community colleges have such a broad mission. They serve students who have such wide needs: from short-term vocational retraining to auto-mechanic and culinary programs to students who are using it as a two-step process for getting a bachelor’s degree,” McDonald said.

“It makes this type of program a little harder to predict because there are a lot of different kinds of students who may find themselves eligible to receive money from the Oregon Promise.”

“But,” McDonald explained, “the bigger problem is that a lot of the students who start at community college never finish community college.”

According to the Statesman Journal, only 24 percent of Oregon community college students who started in 2007-08 finished their degree within seven years. Oregon ranked 32nd out of 36 states for community college completion.

This means that many of the students who are eligible for the Oregon Promise might not even finish the classes necessary to transfer to a university.

Although it isn’t necessary to finish a transfer degree before transferring from a community college to a university, it is recommended because students may otherwise lose credits.

“While we all work hard, there’s little doubt that students do lose some credits, or they find that the subject they studied at one school is different than the subject taught at the school they’re transferring to,” McDonald said. “So the average student that is able to transfer ends up finishing with 15 more credits than the student who started at a four-year school.”

Those 15 unnecessary credits means more money from the student, and more time before completion. To McDonald, the trade isn’t worth it.

“Those 15 additional credits cost money, and they also reflect an opportunity cost. That’s four months that you’re not earning money somewhere with a job. So some of the savings that were there start to erode a little bit for the average transfer student,” he said.

The Oregon Promise has the potential to dramatically affect the enrollment of both community colleges and universities in Oregon. It could take away potential freshmen from universities, but it could also bring more transfer students to universities. How it ultimately affects colleges in Oregon will be revealed in time.

“I think anything they do that can move more students to college is a good thing,” McDonald said. “But only time can tell us if it was the right thing to do.”