Keeping building up bridge to college

College graduation celebrations are now underway in the islands, and the annual high school caps-and-gowns season will soon follow. In recent years, the graduation-on-time count for our K-12 public schools system has hovered a few notches above the 80 percent mark, with slightly more than half of students earning a diploma promptly moving onto college.

There’s good reason to be optimistic that those tallies are poised to rise, given strides being made with higher education readiness efforts, such as “Early College,” through which students can enroll in courses that fetch both high school and college credit. Also, helping aspiring scholars from low-income households make financial ends meet is the fledgling Hawai‘i Promise scholarship program.

In the just-ended legislative session, state lawmakers supported a bill giving a more worthy permanence to that program, with $700,000 in funding for scholarships to cover the unmet direct cost needs of students enrolled at any of the University of Hawaii’s seven community college campuses.

So far, Hawai‘i Promise, which launched last fall, has helped about 1,500 students. In many cases, it has provided free in-state tuition and money for fees, books, supplies and transportation. With a deep discount on their higher-ed price tag, these students can more realistically seize college opportunities as the means to higher-paying jobs and a better quality of life.

Last year, UH asked legislators to allocate $2.5 million for the so-called “last dollar” program, which means that other sources of financial aid — Pell grants and scholarships, for example — are applied before Hawai‘i Promise funds are committed. The Legislature appropriated $1.8 million, which prompted this year’s request for the balance.

When this year’s 60-day session opened, state lawmakers cited education, along with housing and homelessness, as priorities. At the sine die wrap-up, though, education proposals had gathered far fewer immediate financial wins.

The K-12 initiative that drew the most attention is tied to potential for future funding, which will hinge on voter endorsement. The Legislature supported a bill pushed by Hawaii’s teachers union to put before voters a proposal to establish a surcharge on investment real property, which would serve as a funding stream for public education. Approval of the proposal in November’s general election would amend the state Constitution, enabling the 2019 Legislature to set parameters for the education tax.

Meanwhile, helping to bridge the academic gap that looms between high school and college, the Early College program is seeing success in encouraging students to chart career and college paths as early as freshman year. Since the dual- credit program started four years ago, and the number of students who take college courses in high school has more than doubled. Statewide, 17 percent of the class of 2017 graduated with such courses on their transcript, up from 8 percent for the class of 2014.

After spring 2017 commencements, 32 percent of those Hawaii grads entered four-year college programs; and 23 percent, two-year programs. More needs to be done to push those counts up.

It’s understandable that with Hawaii’s unemployment holding at record low rates, teens are tempted to skip matriculation and jump directly into the job market. Educators, therefore, must continue to clearly communicate how a college education pays off.

There are non-monetary benefits, such as college grads being more likely to be civically engaged and healthier than other groups. But the larger lures, of course, are paycheck-based. According to UH Economic Research Organization projections, the holder of a UH associate’s degree on average makes $360,000 more in his or her lifetime over a high school classmate who never went to college. The average UH bachelor’s degree-holder who works here makes $950,000 more.

The spring semester at UH started with enrollment dips at six of 10 campuses. Systemwide, enrollment last increased six years ago. Even so, UH-West Oahu as well as Windward, Kapiolani and Kauai community colleges serve as current bright spots. Each had more students this spring than last.

At flagship UH-Manoa, where enrollment fell below the 20,000 mark in 2014 (for the first time in more than a decade), university President David Lassner, also serving as interim campus chancellor, is pushing back. He has set his sights on a return to the 20k mark within the next few years. That will be a challenge — spring headcount was about 16,570.

But given the ramping up of college readiness in the state’s public high schools, combined with the Legislature’s funding of financial assistance for cash-strapped college-bound students, there’s reason to be optimistic.

On Saturday, UH-Manoa held its 107th commencement exercises at Stan Sheriff Center, with some 2,200 students participating. Here’s hoping that in years to come, more Hawaii-grown students will be moving cap tassels, from right to left.