What is Tech Prep?

Tech Prep is for all students.  An important national education program, Tech Prep provides exciting opportunities for all students to receive valuable education, technical skills, and specialized training that can lead to rewarding high-skill, high-wage, or high-demand careers.  It’s available in high school and it’s free!

Tech Prep encourages students to pursue further education and rewarding careers.  Tech Prep students start learning technical skills AND earning college credit while they are still in high school.  Highly versatile, challenging, hands-on, and responsive to current trends in local industry, Tech Prep programs combine the academic courses needed for success in college AND the technical courses that begin to prepare students for a career.  After high school graduation, Tech Prep students can continue in a community or technical college, receiving further technical training, certification, or an associate degree that can lead directly to rewarding work or prepare them for further education.

Tech Prep makes good sense.  Times have changed.  For today’s youth to be successful, it is every bit as important that they make good career decisions as it is that they make good grades in school.  More and more of today’s jobs require technical skills and training.  In Tech Prep, students have the opportunity to explore career options early, in a hands-on, challenging environment.  In this high school setting students discover their own interests and skills while experiencing practical, real-world ways to pursue their goals in a variety of high-skill, high-paying technical careers.  Through their high school experiences, students learn important social skills, a positive work ethic, and gain the motivation and confidence to be successful in their future chosen careers.  And importantly, because Tech Prep involves local community colleges and local business and industry, students can stay close to home through high school, college, and into their local world of work.

Tech Prep has proven results.  Research shows that Tech Prep students have higher attendance rates, higher graduation rates, lower dropout rates, and go on to college at higher rates than their peers.  And further, Tech Prep works for under-represented and at-risk students.

How Tech Prep works.  Tech Prep works for students by providing the life goals, clear education pathway, academic training, technical expertise, and social skills needed to successfully identify and enter the right high-skill, high-demand, or high-wage career.  By reaching students early, Tech Prep offers important information, understanding, and real-world feedback about personal strengths, talents, and goals so that students are informed and prepared to make wise choices.

Tech Prep saves students and their families time and money.  Because Tech Prep students can get college credit for coursework they finish in high school, they can reach their educational and career goals in a much shorter time.  Students can earn up to 12 college credit hours – that’s about 4 college courses – while they are still in high school - for free – a potential savings of almost $900!

Students can go as far as they want!  Whether students are interested in going on to a university for further education, a community college for college coursework, a certificate or an associate degree, or directly into the workforce, Tech Prep offers numerous ways for them to follow their chosen path and reach their goals.

For more information about Tech Prep, visit your local high school guidance counselor or the Tech Prep Texas website at www.techpreptexas.org

Rev. 2008