But wait, what about...?

Answering critical questions on the way to launching My Foresight Education

Recently, I sent out copies of the business plan to some of my very trusted friends and family for feedback. As expected, they did their best to force me to answer some very tough questions and I wanted to share those questions and answers, as many people had very similar questions, over the course of a few entries. Please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer your questions.

1.) How do My Foresight Education courses differ from Advanced Placement (AP) courses? How do they differ from Community College courses?

A great question. My Foresight Education (MFE) courses offer some of the same elements as AP and community college courses: they are meant to provide collegiate material to high school students so they are more prepared for university. However, there are some very important distinctions.

Let's first start with the short-comings of Advanced Placement courses. AP courses are a great option to high school students, but they target different needs than MFE courses. As most current college students will tell you, taking AP US History and AP US European History when you plan to study Political Science isn't as helpful as you might think. Most universities still require you to take their freshman prerequisite courses in your declared major. So even though you might have scored a 4 or 5 on the exam and received college credits, you'll still need to retake these courses. Ok, "so what?" you're thinking, "I've already taken the course in high school, it can't be that different in college!" As much as the college board would like to say that AP courses are the equivalent to college courses, they are not. The undesired consequence of courses with exit exams is that in many situations, teachers will teach students how to pass this exam. Let me be clear, I am not asserting this is always the case; however, when this does occur the educational value of AP exams plummets. My Foresight Education places a value on the transfer of knowledge; there are no exit exams. In addition, we work with current university professors to develop curricula which is then delivered by qualified instructors with extensive experience working solely with that subject matter.

Community college courses suit high school students much better than AP courses. Unfortunately, many community colleges have a misplaced bias that they are institutions of lesser education when in fact, community colleges in the United States usually have the same level of professional educators as any other college. So why don't high school students take more courses with community colleges? We believe there are two factors: (1) They are inflexible and (2) They seem expensive. Let's start with the latter. Because community college offer college credit, which will be accepted by most universities, rates for courses range from $150-$300/credit, making a course more than $450 in most cases. In reality, that rate is more than reasonable, but to high school students that cost usually seems expensive, especially when combines with the first factor, inflexibility. Although community college courses are offered during various times, high school students are constantly running from one activity to another, with schedules changing daily. My Foresight Education understands this and has developed its courses to be flexible to any student's schedule. In addition, we have developed analytical software which analyzes a student's time usage and recommends time maximizing efforts upon completion of a course.

In summary, MFE courses are not meant to replace AP courses or Community College offerings. Instead, we believe our curricula targets the increasing demands placed on high school students. In essence, our courses are meant to supplement the high school learning experience by exposing students to advanced topics (International Relations, Finance, Journalism, Ethics) not normally offered in high school. While some schools might offer similar courses as Advanced Placement or as electives, our courses are designed by professors and are instructed on a collegiate level.