Running Start

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The Running Start program is an effort by the state of Washington to reward high-performing high school students by providing them with early admission to college.It is very similar to dual enrollment programs common at public and privite colleges and universities in other states.

Piloted in the early 1990s and officially approved to begin in the fall of 1993, the Running Start program offers up to two years of paid tuition at any state-run community college or four-year university to students in their junior or senior year of high school. The program is offered, for example, at Eastern Washington University, where a minimum GPA is required and students must pass math, writing, and English exams before they can enroll in college level classes in these subjects. Juniors who can pass the entrance exam for a local community college may take part or all of their coursework at the community college. Their tuition is fully covered by the state, and successfully passing a course earns a student both high school and college credit for the course.

The system was designed to make it possible for a motivated high schooler to take all their classes for their final two years of high school at the community college: at the end of those two years, the student would have completed the necessary credits for high school graduation, as well as having completed the necessary college credits to receive an associate's degree. In practice, many students choose to take only a few classes at the college, partly because of the difficulty of college coursework, and partly to keep from missing out on the social life at high school. Students are only eligible to have 18 credits per quarter paid for, and they may only have tuition covered in the fall, winter, and spring quarters of their junior and senior years in high school.They may, however, attend during the summer quarter as long as they come up with their own sources of money for the tuition costs. In most cases, students are responsible for paying any fees, transportation, and book costs as well.

When the program first started it was greeted with some initial resistance at community colleges and universities by professors who feared they would be teaching to sixteen year olds who neither had the maturity or academic discipline to excel at the college level. This skepticism was quieted at first due to the fact that most of the students participating during the first few years of the program tended to be among the top academically in their high schools and took the college courses very seriously since most were there to prepare for transfer to a four-year university.