The dual-credit Beacon program offers a high school to college pathway that was significantly expanded under the previous college administration and is now being restructured to better ensure academic quality. (image by Cynthia Eaton using clker-free-vector-images)

As the semester winds down, many classroom faculty seem to be feeling a little more drained than what’s typical for them at this point in the fall semester. This is understandable, given the ongoing student enrollment and retention challenges that directly impact the college’s financial status, hiring decisions and timeline for providing resources.

Other contentious issues that have raised stress levels include the recently released credentialing manual and issues surrounding the Beacon program. The two are related, but Beacon has taken on a level of scrutiny that it has not had before, and we understand there are faculty not liking what they see. To help coalesce where we are at this point, I share an overview below.

What is Beacon?

Beacon is the college’s dual-enrollment program (our contract refers to it as dual credit, and they’re sometimes called concurrent enrollment). Having existed in New York State for decades, these programs allow high school students to take and receive college credit for courses, which gives them a head start on their higher education experience. Previously known as the Excelsior program, the program at SCCC was originally much smaller and focused on high-achieving high school students to get a jump start on college.

Beacon was significantly expanded over the last decade under the previous college president and vice president for academic affairs (VPAA). Currently, the college offers Beacon courses to 63 high schools in Suffolk County, with approximately 5,000 students taking Beacon courses in any given academic year. The college offers a total of 96 different courses, with high schools choosing which they provide for their students. The percentage of Beacon students who then come to SCCC as college students is very low, at about 6%.

SCCC is not the only game in town, with students being able to take courses from other four-year SUNY and private institutions while in high school. Our cost is among the lowest for students, though, making it attractive to parents and students alike. Beacon courses are a fraction of the cost per credit, about one third, of a course taught at SCCC.

How did this all start?

Dual credit was negotiated in our 2005-11 contract, and we have specific language addressing the way our dual-credit program is supposed to operate. This is where some problems begin, as there seems to have been a departure from what should be and what is happening in some, perhaps many, cases.

The contract states that the “appropriate academic discipline/department” will consult with the VPAA regarding which courses will be offered and that Beacon courses will be taught by high school teachers whose credentials are “judged by the College to be comparable to those of the college faculty teaching the course” at SCCC. These two issues are where most of the tension now stems from. There is also clear language that faculty “in the appropriate discipline will be assigned as the faculty mentor” to the high school teachers offering Beacon classes to provide some academic quality assurance.

In the beginning, when the program was smaller, this was more manageable. Now things are very different.

Why dual enrollment is so popular

The Beacon program at SCCC is far from unique, and over the past two decades dual enrollment has significantly increased across the nation. In August, the American Association of Community Colleges reported U.S. Department of Education data showing that nationally, as of the 2022-23 academic year, “roughly one-fifth (20.4%) of public community college enrollment consisted of students still in high school,” which was nearly 2.5 million dual-enrolled students, three quarters of which were doing so through their local public community college.

The popularity of such programs with students, parents and politicians has skyrocketed, as the U.S. Department of Education has published data for over a decade showing that dual-enrollment programs like Beacon have a positive impact on students’ postsecondary degree completion. Students who participate in courses like Beacon are more likely to attend college and attain a postsecondary degree, as noted by Columbia University Teachers College’s Community College Research Center and the American Association of Community Colleges, among other sources.

One of the most recent reports, published this week in Inside Higher Ed, from the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse shows that “Seventy-one percent of students in the 2018 cohort who earned credit through dual enrollment completed a college credential in six years, compared to 57.4 percent of students without dual-enrollment experience.”

Unsurprisingly, local parents and politicians have been quite vocal in wanting to see Beacon classes not only continue but expand, particularly in the name of equity.

What voice do faculty have?

We have to acknowledge that administration does in fact have the right to determine which courses are taught, both at the college and in our Beacon program. Consulting with academic departments does not mean that faculty are the deciders. Administration also holds the right to credential faculty—and, yes, that includes Beacon teachers. The credentialing manual draft that was released earlier in the semester raised concerns because faculty felt the alternative credentials listed, some of which primarily aimed at addressing Beacon teachers, are in some cases not comparable.

While administration has historically been very supportive of the shared governance model we embrace, governance creates recommendations that administration has the right to adopt or not to adopt. In most cases, administration does support the recommendations put forth by governance, but they are not mandated to do so.

As noted above, we know that under previous administrators, Beacon was significantly expanded in terms of the number of courses being offered, while there was no corresponding expansion of oversight or academic quality control measures. Our contract states that the FA shall be notified of any dual credit course offered, and we know this did not happen. The contract also calls for faculty mentors to be assigned, along with guidelines on mentoring compensation, and we know that was far from consistent as well. Our current VPAA’s immediate predecessor attempted to rein things in last year, but with far less than ideal results.

This is where we are today, with a very large number of Beacon courses being offered at high schools across the county, by high school teachers who often do not have credentials that we might deem comparable (because high school teachers often hold not a masters in the discipline but in education), and with little assurance that the courses being offered are indeed equal to the courses we offer in terms of rigor or even basic learning outcomes.

This is not to say, however, that there aren’t Beacon teachers who are doing an excellent job at delivering our course content to their students; there are in fact many students receiving an outstanding experience, as our faculty who have served as mentors can attest.

What is being done currently to address concerns?

The FA requested a labor-management committee to address the Beacon program, and administration agreed. We also currently have a working group comprised of administration, FA leadership and faculty mentors, and we have begun the task of addressing the concerns with Beacon while respecting the needs of the college. We are actively revising the Beacon handbook, which was very outdated, and we are clarifying the roles and responsibilities of faculty mentors while also ensuring mentoring compensation is fair (no small task because originally a Beacon mentor might work with only one or two high school teachers, but now they work with multiple teachers).

However, because the FA has purview over the mentoring aspect of Beacon, faculty do have an opportunity to make this situation better. The mentoring program is temporarily on hold while the FA and administration reevaluate the role of mentors to fall within contractual parameters. Some of our previous mentors have continued their work, to their credit, because they have built strong and positive relationships with their high school teachers. We are deeply grateful to those members, and the FA will fight for compensation despite the administrative pause on mentoring this semester.

Another complication is that our high school teaching partners have unions as well, and our faculty must respect the rights of our union siblings. We simply cannot overstep the boundaries of our ability to oversee what is happening in their classrooms. Administration can, however, insist to high school administrators that they ensure our courses are being taught in a way that aligns with our predetermined and agreed upon course learning outcomes.

Finally, we are actively developing recommendations to increase the number of students who enroll at SCCC after taking Beacon courses. There’s no way around it: we need to improve enrollment and retention at the college, and easing the pipeline for high school Beacon students to “get their start at Suffolk” is one promising path for the college. This seems to be something the college has not aggressively pursued, so our working group is recommending initiatives.

Moving forward

However you want to phrase it, “the horse is out of the barn” or “the toothpaste is out of the tube,” the fact is we are not going to see a rollback or shrinking of the Beacon program. In fact, we are likely to see expansion. The college relies on Beacon revenue for a sizeable portion of its annual budget, and our county legislators and other local elected officials are very supportive of the families in their districts who have high schoolers taking Beacon courses.

Whether or not you believe those are good reasons, they are very real reasons, and we must now work with the situation we have at hand. Of course we know that faculty and administrative motivations to pursue any project often differ: their concerns are often more managerial and financial, while ours are primarily academic. But one thing we know well in the FA is that all negotiations involve a give and take. Our contract is filled with things that we like and dislike and, of course, administration feels the same. It’s an unavoidable aspect of negotiations.

Most importantly, Beacon is also an opportunity for many high school students and is an equity issue for thousands of students who are saving thousands of dollars while accessing college courses. Our job now is to do the work necessary to ensure that the courses that have our name on them, wherever they are taught, are worthy of our name and reputation. If faculty are not willing to step up to help do this work—if faculty are only willing to insist that the college eliminate Beacon altogether—we risk losing credibility at the table when critical decisions are being made. We need strong voices who are also willing to listen.

The distress felt by faculty who believe the Beacon program has very much lost its way is real. The distress over the perception that administration has steamrolled faculty and is doing whatever it wants solely out of financial concern is also real.

But I can assure you there is also a very real and very strong desire on the part of both administration and faculty to fix the problems we are facing—and to do it for the right reasons. There is work to be done, and the FA will continue to ensure that faculty voice is not lost in the process.