Joe Rodriguez, 19, of Wixom, is the oldest of nine children.
The child of a single mom, he was always expected to set a good example for his siblings. He started taking classes through Oakland Community College as a junior in high school.
He found that traditional college students didn’t treat him any differently as he joined them in classes as a 16-year-old.
“They were actually really nice,” he said. “We’re all just trying to get a degree.”
Rodriguez will be in the first class of graduates in the three-year Accelerated College Experience, a partnership between Oakland Schools intermediate district, OCC and 18 Oakland County school districts that participate in the program.
Rodriguez plans to transfer to Wayne State University this fall and enroll in the pharmacy program.
His brother, Eric, 18, is graduating this year from Lakeland High School and is also in ACE. The two brothers are encouraging a 16-year-old sister to join the program as well.
ACE students don’t pay for tuition, fees or books. They earn 30 college credits in their junior and senior years in high school. They can earn another 30 credits in the third year of the program. Their home school district bears the cost.
ACE students can earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a four-year college. During the first two years of the program, they are traditional high school students. They participate in commencement exercises, senior prom and other high school traditions.
At a roundtable discussion with U.S. Sen. Gary Peters at OCC’s Royal Oak campus Monday, many students in the program said they are the children of single parents and wouldn’t have been able to go to college without it.
Others said they are first-generation college students, and the program gave them guidance on how to navigate registering for classes, how to research colleges and other aspects of higher education that their parents could not provide.
Peters is a cosponsor of legislation to allow colleges to apply for grants to develop curriculum and provide support for dual enrollment and early college programs.
“The thing that I worry about every day is how can we make college affordable for everybody,” Peters said.
He said when he was in college, he received help from his parents with tuition, earned a partial scholarship, had a job, and got a degree with no debt.
“Today, if you have all three of those things, you’re probably still going to have debt,” he said.
That makes it difficult for young people to move forward with their lives after they’ve earned their degrees, he said.
“It’s tough to rent an apartment. It’s tough to buy a car,” he said.
Last year, Peters introduced an amendment to the Every Student Succeeds Act that allows school districts to use Title I funds to support concurrent and dual enrollment programs at eligible schools. Title I funds are made available to school districts with high percentages of low-income students.