Honors Projects

Abstract

Bowling Green State University College of Business students who have taken over 30 credits of College Credit Plus in high school consistently take longer than the expected four years to graduate with a bachelors’ degree, and experience negative consequences in part due to their missing out on the important aspects and transformations of freshman year.

There are a lot of benefits to College Credit Plus (CCP). It is a standardized, growing program in Ohio schools that allows students to dual enroll in high school and college at the same time. However, due to past research opportunities and personal experiences, research was initiated to find out if the program had certain negative aspects when taken in excess. First, background knowledge was acquired from completing a previous class’s project on Rhodes State College’s CCP program. This past research project along with my personal experience led me to want to expand the research and focus now on the student perspective. Research was conducted within Bowling Green State University’s (BGSU) College of Business to see if the positives outweighed the negatives for students who extensively participated in the program. Students who had taken a full year’s worth (30 credits or more) of CCP in high school were the target interviewees, because they essentially completed a full year of college before enrollment. After conducting research by meeting with experts, interviewing students, and consulting external data, I concluded that my original predictions in my thesis were correct along with several other points. I worked with my two faculty advisers and met with three other experts to obtain background data that would assist in my project. Then, I found sample students to interview using surveys and other mechanisms. 50 students were interviewed using standardized questions, and from that data, statistics and ideas were formed to prove or disprove my original thesis. After going through my data, I found that my thesis was correct along with other points that were frequently brought up.

My new thesis that better fits my data is as follows:

BGSU College of Business students who have taken over 30 credits of College Credit Plus in high school on average take longer than the expected four years to graduate with a bachelors’ degree. They also tend to experience negative consequences due to not understanding the implications of College Credit Plus, which include non-replicable coursework, missing out on important experiences in college, and not making the right decisions for their college experience.

Department

Accounting and Management Information Systems

Major

Accounting

First Advisor

Ruth White

First Advisor Department

Marketing

Second Advisor

Roc Starks

Second Advisor Department

Finance

Publication Date

Spring 5-8-2020

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