New college partnership announced by Todd

By Ashley Gatlin

UK is teaming up with Bluegrass Community and Technical College to introduce a new cooperative student transfer opportunity program.
During a news conference Wednesday morning on the BCTC Cooper campus, UK President Lee Todd and BCTC President Augusta Julian signed agreements to put the Blue Plus Program into action.
The program is designed to allow BCTC students to take up to 12 credit hours of UK course work at the BCTC tuition rate. Its goal is to enable students to take classes that will count towards their degree after they transfer to a four-year institution.

“You don’t want to just take a bunch of hours if it doesn’t count toward your degree,” Todd said.
Students are allowed to take more than 12 hours of UK course work. However, additional hours will be billed at the UK tuition rate instead of the BCTC rate.
According to the schools’ Web sites, UK’s current tuition rate for a Kentucky resident is $307 per credit hour. At BCTC it is $121 per credit hour for a resident.
“We still expect a lot of students from around the state to come directly into UK, but some students feel that they are not ready,” Todd said. “It is our goal to help you achieve your goals.”
Todd and Julian said they hope the new plan will create more opportunities and make it easier for students to earn a bachelor’s degree. The goal is to increase the number of transfer students from 4,000 per year up to more than 11,000 per year.
“Students who complete their associate’s degree are more likely to go on and complete a bachelor’s degree,” Julian said.
States with top-20 research schools have a 28 percent population with bachelor’s degrees, Todd said.  The population in Kentucky with bachelor’s degrees is 20 percent.
“We need more Kentuckians competing to complete four year programs,” Todd said. “We want this to be a model that is one we can continue to invest in.”