NIU, 5 community colleges launch dual business degree
Northern Illinois University and five community colleges announced Friday a new program designed to help working students with families earn a business degree closer to home.
It's meant to keep nontraditional students from putting college on hold and expand access to higher education for those unable to enroll full-time at NIU's main campus in DeKalb.
The program is open to students who get their associate's degrees in business within three years at the five participating schools: Harper College, Elgin Community College, Oakton Community College, College of Lake County and McHenry County College.
To get in the program, students must keep their grades up, follow a rigorous class schedule and meet other admission requirements.
The payoff? The convenience of being able to take classes - evenings and weekends - at NIU's satellite campus in Hoffman Estates. Eligible students also can receive scholarships and pay tuition rates frozen at the time they were admitted for up to nine straight semesters.
"Some of these are working adults. Some of these are students with family obligations, things that make it really important for them to stay close to home, close to the community college," NIU Executive Vice President and Provost Lisa Freeman said. "And we're just really excited to bring them the quality of the NIU business degree at an affordable price and a place where it's easy for them to come."
Counselors will track students' progress while in community college. Then, as juniors, the students will transfer "seamlessly" to NIU, where they are expected to complete their bachelor's degree in business administration in two years from its Hoffman Estates conference center north of I-90.
"If students see the pathway early and they work toward that pathway, they're more likely to finish," Freeman said. "Now the students will have the opportunity to identify with both their community college and NIU from the beginning."
NIU will likely roll out the program in January. A new group of students - anywhere from 20 to 50 - could join the program three times a year, College of Business Dean Denise Schoenbachler said.
"It is truly like a mini-MBA," Schoenbachler said. "The students get a little bit of all the different disciplines and have some expertise in everything as opposed to being just accounting or just marketing."
The goal is to raise graduation rates for students who otherwise might take years to get their four-year degrees.
Under the terms of an agreement signed Friday, NIU and the five community colleges will share data, paying "close attention" to low-income students and those who are the first in their families to go to college.
Today, jobs that sustain a family through retirement and "a good middle class lifestyle" require "postsecondary credentials and the capacity to build on those credentials," Harper President Ken Ender said.
"We've never designed a system to do that," Ender said. "This represents in my view the beginning of a system that could do that."
Former Harper students now at NIU who didn't earn their associate degree can benefit from a so-called reverse transfer agreement also signed Friday. The pact allows students to receive their Harper degree by counting NIU courses toward it. Then, they can use that Harper degree in the job market while still pursuing a four-year degree.
Harper is the ninth community college to sign such a pact; three more are planned.
School leaders also pledge to collaborate in other areas of study.
"This is the beginning," ECC President David Sam said. "We are now going to look at the other programs and see what we can work together on."