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  • BARGAIN OF THE CENTURY

    Filed at 8:06 pm under by dcobranchi

    We registered Anthony at the local CC today. Three 3-hour courses. Total cost (excl. books): $14. Looks like he’ll have to look into a student loan. 🙂

    13 Responses to “BARGAIN OF THE CENTURY”


    Comment by
    Lillian
    June 27th, 2008
    at 9:20 am

    Wow — when we registered Alex for two three-credit classes last September it cost $469, and that was with the high school discount. (He dropped the classes before they started, but that’s another story!)


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    June 27th, 2008
    at 9:36 am

    NC has a terrific program in which high school students can take classes for free concurrently at the CC. It’s only supposed to be for classes that are not taught at their regular school. For HEKs that’s pretty much whatever we want it to be. Lots of HEKs accumulate enough credits to start their college careers as sophomores.

    Anthony will be taking Am Hist I, Spanish I, and Psych I. Spring schedule is probably Span II, Am Hist II, and Econ I (Micro). Total fees for the year are $44. Books will run another $60 or so. Yeah. $60 for all 6 classes. All of the sections for any class use the exact same text, so they’re easily recycled. Last semester we bought his Soc book for $40 (very slightly used). New it goes for $120. So selling it to the next semesters’ Soc students for $30 will be a piece of cake.


    Comment by
    Toni
    June 27th, 2008
    at 11:15 am

    Ha, $60 per text book? Just wait…

    We paid $159 for a textbook for one of my son’s Wake Tech classes in 07-08. .. And of course many course require a brand new edition so buying second hand is often not an option.

    This is often the case with programming classes. I can see needing up-to-date text books but there is no way I can rationalize the price tag. What a racket.


    Comment by
    JJ Ross
    June 27th, 2008
    at 11:53 am

    Just goes to show that what’s “public” about public education isn’t the deal-breaker and never really was.

    K-12 public schooling could work like this but so far they just won’t. Florida HEKs can use CCs exactly as Daryl describes and we don’t hear a single objection even from the most ideological anti-government homeschool parents, who spent years ranting in the abstract about “public” education. As soon as their own kids get old enough (age 15 is the minimum) they are THERE! 😉


    Comment by
    COD
    June 27th, 2008
    at 11:53 am

    The concept of a textbook for a programming class is laughable. He should be downloading a pdf file of the book.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    June 27th, 2008
    at 3:12 pm

    Ha, $60 per text book? Just wait…

    No. $10 per class. Net-net.


    Comment by
    StarGirl
    June 27th, 2008
    at 3:37 pm

    Resell ’em on Amazon. You can often do quite well there selling used texts, and it’s dead easy. *Much* more lucrative than selling them back to the bookstore.


    Comment by
    Dee Dee
    June 27th, 2008
    at 4:34 pm

    He’s fortunate. My teen can only take 11 credit hours as long as he is a co-enrolled high school student. Then he has to pay the student fees, but not any fees for classes. The last textbook we bought (for a German class) ran $160, but it was a just published version that the instructor insisted upon using.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    June 27th, 2008
    at 5:14 pm

    NC law says that they have to be taking at least half of their classes at their “home school.” For HEKs the CC interprets that as a max of 12 hours.


    Comment by
    don
    June 27th, 2008
    at 10:24 pm

    Iowa has a similar deal for high school kids. HSers have to dual enroll to use it though, but I think you can dual enroll and the CC classes count as the g-school classes, so your kid doesn’t actually have to go to a regular public high school to do it.

    How old is Anthony? Jessica is 13 and from what we’ve heard, a lot of HEKs around here start CC at 14, so we’re thinking about having her start with one course next year.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    June 28th, 2008
    at 4:44 am

    Anthony will turn 17 in Oct. Kids 14 and 15 can dual enroll, but their parents have to stay with them on campus at all times. 16 is the minimum age to take classes without a minder.


    Comment by
    JJ Ross
    June 28th, 2008
    at 10:07 am

    Don, here too — “dual” can be: 1) the CC and 2) home education. No high school.

    Our daughter started at 15 with one writing course, then two theatre courses, choosing her own favorite things first, so that she had a wonderful experience and was pegged as an honor student. That paved her way into success with other subjects later.

    One wrinkle here is that CC dual enrollment is tuition-free only for a two-year calendar period, so you don’t want to start the clock before you’re ready or you wind up wasting some of the benefit.


    Comment by
    KarenE
    July 16th, 2008
    at 2:05 pm

    Wow. In MD we paid $250 for one Psych. class, which is supposed to be half price, and $80 for the book. The professor came to the high school 2 days a week. At least she got an A.