We often hear people say that college is the new high school. Today’s Martin Center article is by a homeschooled student who opted for a dual-enrollment program allowing him to get some college credits while still in high school. He found his college classes to be less rigorous than his high-school work.

The author, Joe Warta, thought he could save time and money by taking advantage of North Carolina’s Career and College Promise program. He was allowed to take some courses at Wake Tech Community College, assured that the credits would transfer to UNC–Chapel Hill. He was badly disappointed:

It was not until I actually started the classes at Wake Tech, however, that I found my college classes lacked the academic rigor I had in my high school courses. Wake Tech’s classes were simply not as challenging as I expected — or hoped — them to be.

What were his Wake Tech classes like? He took a criminal-justice course with an instructor whose spelling was so poor that Warta had difficulty understanding his instructions and questions. He also got credit for a “course” that amounted to nothing more than a full semester of freshman orientation. Colleges (not just community colleges) like to get incoming students off to an easy start, which helps retain the weakest ones. No one worries much about wasting the time of the smart ones.

Warta also had to endure some slanted courses. “Some classes,” he writes, “were highly politicized, especially my first English class, ‘Writing and Inquiry.’ Much of the time in that class was devoted to discussing current political issues. Very little time was spent on writing; instead, the majority of the time we spent reading and discussing partisan drivel. Readings included Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, which promoted the idea that extensive government regulation is necessary to “help the poor” and an essay glorifying the morality of theft from the rich by the poor.”

More than ten years ago, UNC made that screedy Ehrenreich book its summer reading assignment and I’m sad to hear that it’s still popular. Assigning a book like that shows that the instructor is more interested in planting socialistic notions in the heads of the students than in working on their ability to write.

Despite time-wasting and badly taught courses, Warta found some value in the CCP program. It sped up his entry into UNC and saved him around $4,000. But his saving was a cost to the state taxpayers; as Warta notes, the program costs them around $85 million per year. Too bad there is so little educational gain in the courses that enable students like Joe Warta to get into real college sooner.