Katie Escobar and her sister, brother, parents, boyfriend and four dogs squeezed around a dark wooden dining room table on a recent Sunday night.

Rachel Livinal

The Merced FOCUS

Conversation flowed with weekly updates, favorite TV shows and an almost constant banter between the family members. The Escobars certainly don’t agree on everything, but they all value the same thing: education.

Between the seven members of the family, they’ve obtained 10 college degrees.

Katie, 23, is currently in a master’s degree program studying education, but she earned her first degree much earlier. The same year she graduated from El Capitan High School, she also obtained an associate of arts degree from Merced College in social and behavioral science. An associate of arts degree is made up of 60 college credits, usually the equivalent of two years in full-time college.

Katie was hooked upon taking her first college class.

“I was really interested in seeing what else I could take, and from each year, I just started taking more,” she said.

But Katie is far from alone in getting a degree so young. More and more K-12 students in the San Joaquin Valley are either taking college courses or earning an associate of arts, otherwise known as an “AA” degree. Research shows such academic strides in high school can help students like Katie finish college and accelerate their careers.

Katie is witnessing this shift among others in high school.

“I feel like it’s gotten more popular,” she said. “I know I’ve heard of more cases each time I hear about the graduating classes at the end of the year.”

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College in High School: The Benefit for Students

According to data from California Community Colleges, the educational system representing all community colleges in the state, from 2018 to 2020 the number of Valley teenagers who obtained an associate degree nearly doubled. Since then, around 1,700 students 19 or younger have earned these degrees each year.

Dual enrollment, a phrase used by educators to define high school students who take college classes, has grown too.

That’s particularly true at community colleges, and the Valley has led the shift. Last fall, 31% of students enrolled at community colleges in the Central Valley were simultaneously enrolled in grades K-12 — the highest of any region in the state.

One county in particular stands out, according to Olga Rodriguez, executive director of higher education for the Public Policy Institute of California.

“When we think about the drive and increasing access and especially in rural communities, often Kern County comes to mind,” Rodriguez said.

According to Rodriguez, that’s partly because California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian previously served as president of Bakersfield College. Christian told the nonprofit news site Ed Source one of her main goals in becoming chancellor was to expand dual enrollment beyond the south Valley.

Reaching that goal won’t come without challenges, considering a recent study done by the institute found college completion in the region is the lowest in the state.

Rodriguez said millions of dollars in state funding have gone to support dual enrollment in the Valley. In a recent panel hosted by the institute, Valley education leaders said they continue to work together to expand higher education access.

Educators statewide increased the push for dual enrollment in 2016, with a law that allowed community colleges to partner with local school districts to provide initiatives like the College and Career Access Pathways program. Under this program, tuition and textbooks are free for high school students who enroll part-time into college classes.

Indeed, affordability “is one of the top concerns on people’s minds,” Rodriguez said.

The bill passed in large part thanks to various studies that show high schoolers who take classes for college credit have a higher chance of continuing college after they graduate.

Plus, attending college is shown to open doors of opportunity. Rodriguez said the more education a student attains, the greater chance they have of getting a job with “higher pay, higher benefits, better working conditions, paid vacation and paid leave.”

High school counselors also say dual enrollment reduces anxiety and questions about going to college.

“We’ve got kids getting an idea of what college is like while they’re in high school,” said Jennifer Souza, a high school and college counselor at Buhach Colony High in Merced.

“That can be a barrier for kids [wondering] ‘Where do I go? Who do I talk to? What do I do?'” Souza said. “That can be a reason that they drop out. So that exposure is nice.”

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For the Escobars, College Helped Through Tragedy

But there was a time when neither was sure that would happen. Eight months earlier, Katie’s step-sister, Riley Hanson, died in a car accident.

“When everything happened with my sister, the world just kind of stop[ped],” she said. “Everything just kind of stop[ped].”

But she and her dad said college classes gave them something to achieve. They both decided they had to graduate.

At their commencement ceremony in 2019, Matt Escobar Sr. gave a speech while his daughter was seated among the new graduates.

“I made a promise to Riley, my other daughters and my son that I would complete my courses and not give up,” he said. “I decided that a father’s responsibilities and duties don’t stop once your child is gone. They stop once you are gone.”

He praised his daughter’s diligence for finishing her degree — while acknowledging how long it took him to finish his.

“I refer to ourselves as ‘better late than never,’ [and] ‘the sooner the better,'” he said. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”

Katie was proud of herself too. She said the degree helped her persevere, and set her up for success in her adult life.

“Me taking the time to get the degree and put that effort made me realize I don’t have to sell myself short,” she said.

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Guiding Other Futures

In the five years since graduating high school, Katie obtained a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanislaus State, and she’s one of the youngest in her classes pursuing an online master’s degree at Grand Canyon University. She wants to be a high school counselor.

In the meantime, she’s serving as a coordinator at an after school program for Atwater High students in Merced County.

Every afternoon, kids cluster throughout a small makeshift game room on campus. Some shoot pool while others play video games.

When she’s not handing them controllers, she tells them about prospective college classes. She wants to improve upon the counseling she received. She said her senior year, after her sister died, she didn’t think she received enough resources.

“I needed a lot more emotional help, and I don’t like to mention it, but I probably saw my counselor one time that year,” Katie Escobar said. “So now that I see a lot of these students struggling that I work with, I know I could be that figure for them.”

About the Author

Rachel Livinal is the Higher Education Reporter for The Merced Focus.