High school students taking concurrent enrollment courses from Utah State University have fewer options to choose from this year.

University officials voted earlier this summer to cancel online concurrent enrollment classes due to budgetary and quality assurance concerns.

Robert Peterson, director of student services at USU Uintah Basin, said the cancellation shouldn’t have much of a scheduling impact for local students. Only four online sections were available as part of the concurrent enrollment program.

“We are in a wonderful position in the Uintah Basin because we have more class offerings than some of the other rural areas,” Peterson said. “This hasn’t impacted us much. Through other methods of delivery, students can still take the same sections that were canceled.”

Still, Peterson said there will be some high school students who have jobs or participate in sports and will likely miss the convenience of online courses.

Numbers identifying the percentage of local concurrent enrollment students who opted to take online courses last year were not immediately available. But Peterson said it was a small percentage of the approximately 350 high school students who participate in classes in Roosevelt or Vernal.

Ronda Menlove, USU’s vice provost for Regional Campuses and Distance Education, said online courses for high school students were instituted just before the 2009-10 academic year.

“As we ventured into online classes we started to recognize there were a lot of concerns and a lot of questions we couldn’t answer,” she said.

Chief among those concerns was whether or not high school students have the maturity needed to learn effectively from online classes, Menlove said. Students who aren’t able to find the motivation to meet deadlines without instructor reminders would be followed to college by poor transcripts.

“Our duty is to make sure we are delivering a quality product and ensuring that students have a good learning experience,” she said.

Menlove said the latest research indicates that one particularly effective method of learning for students is a hybrid class that mixes online learning with some face-to-face instruction. University officials currently have several pilot classes that follow this model and hope to be able to implement the method in more courses in the future.

In addition to concerns about teens’ abilities to learn effectively online, budgetary questions also played in to the university’s decision to ax the courses. Menlove said a typical three-credit college course costs around $800 or $900, regardless of whether it is offered online or in a classroom. Because of an agreement with the Legislature, high school students can take courses for free. Menlove said state funding helps defray a portion of the cost but not the full price.

“Financially, we just can’t provide open access to everyone, everywhere,” she said. “It would be derelict of us. The more enrollments, the less money there is because we have to divide the pie into more pieces.”

Menlove said the easy accessibility of online courses made university officials question whether they could legally deny access to students outside of their official service area.

“What if the entire student body at a high school on the Wasatch Front decided they wanted to hook in to this?” she asked. “We were envisioning thousands more students wanting enrollment, less money, and more work.”

Although online classes for teens have been canceled, Menlove said providing plenty of concurrent enrollment offerings is still a priority for university officials.

“We are committed to doing everything possible to make sure we have a strong concurrent enrollment program within our USU service area,” she said.