“We want to make sure that all students have access to a great college experience, if they so choose, and we also know that for too long, money’s been a barrier,” Healey told the Globe in an interview this week. “We know from studies that students who’ve done early college have a greater persistence rate, that is staying in college once they start.”

The state says the program is working so far, with about 66 percent of early college graduates immediately enrolling in higher education after high school, and about 82 percent of students returning for a second year. Students from middle-income as well as wealthy families can also participate in the program at no cost.

Proponents of the state’s early college program say exposing teenagers, especially first-generation and low-income students, to college campuses and coursework in high school helps build confidence and increases the likelihood they will go on to pursue higher education.

“It has proven to be a really productive way of creating a bridge for students, many of whom are from communities in which they may not have envisioned themselves as college material,” said David Silva, Salem State University’s provost. “It raises the level of conscious awareness that college is an option.”

In January, Healey announced an additional $8.2 million for early college grants to support dozens of new partnerships between high schools and colleges. The state’s fiscal 2026 budget included over $14 million for early college, which supports programs with more than 75 high schools, as of last fall. The governor hopes to double the number of participating students to 20,000 by 2028.

High school students from all grades and income levels participate in the program, which includes transportation to and from the participating college campuses, as well as support services such as tutoring and advising. Some high school teachers are also trained to support professors teaching the classes.

“I want all students in the state to have access,” Healey said.

Early college dovetails with other efforts in the state to let students graduate in three years, resulting in quicker, less expensive degrees. The state’s board of higher education recently voted to allow colleges and universities to begin experimenting with innovative degree offerings, which has prompted a heated debate over whether bachelor’s degrees should be condensed.

To Healey, it’s an enticing opportunity for pragmatic students who are interested in pursuing college but wary of the price tag, and said she is prepared to push colleges to experiment. A three-year path might not work for every discipline, but Healey sees ample opportunity for colleges to rethink the length of many degree offerings.

“We attract students from all over the world and all over the country,” Healey said. “Imagine if we can innovate and be the first to really make a three-year degree something that you can do — imagine the numbers we’re going to recruit and draw to Massachusetts to take advantage of that in our schools.”

Combining early college with a three-year degree could theoretically cut the cost of a bachelor’s degree by up to 75 percent if a student graduated high school with two years’ worth of credit.

Several students told the Globe it was a seamless transition from early college to four-year programs at public universities in Massachusetts.

Sebastian Rivera, a first-generation college student from Lowell, is working on his bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts Lowell after his high school guidance counselor informed him he was on track to graduate with 23 college credits.

A typical bachelor’s degree requires 120 credits. Realizing he could save a whole year’s worth of tuition was “really a game-changer,” Rivera said.

“That was super powerful to know that I belong in higher education and I have the confidence to tackle this because I was able to do college in high school,” Rivera said.

Gianna McColley wasn’t sure she was going to pursue higher education after high school because of the rising costs. She enrolled at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School in Haverhill, so she would have workforce skills “no matter what.” But experiencing college courses as a teenager made her realize that a bachelor’s degree was within reach if she could walk away with debt-free.

She graduated high school in 2023 with an associate’s degree in psychology before enrolling at Salem State University. McColley is now on a Fubright grant in Spain after graduating with her bachelor’s degree in two years, having studied abroad in Spain and Mexico. McColley said it was at times exhausting and stressful to commit to such a heavy academic load in high school, but said her efforts paid off when she saw how easy it was to transfer her credits to Salem State.

“It’s just a really amazing opportunity,” McColley said. “If there is something offered through your high school I don’t think there is a reason not to take advantage.”

Not all educators are sure the early college program is the best use of state resources.

Nancy Niemi, president of Framingham State University, is skeptical about plans to grow the program and is concerned about the lack of a “strategic plan or framework for helping us figure out, as a Commonwealth,” the best path forward.

“Early College is the Wild West still, across the country and across the Commonwealth,” Niemi said.

She isn’t convinced that high schoolers are developmentally ready for college coursework, and she worries about the cost for Framingham State as the program grows. The state reimburses colleges $180 per credit for early college programs, and institutions must cover any remaining balance for support services, including advising on academic work and possible career trajectories.

“I cannot afford the Early College Program I have,” Niemi said. “Our director’s time is constantly split, thinking about how am I going to get this next dollar? All of that makes me very worried about putting a lot of hope into early college programs.”

Other educators and many students seem optimistic about the state’s efforts to reduce college costs.

Early college has broadened Salem High School students’ “horizons of what they feel like they’re even capable of doing,” said Meghan Grosskopf Sousa, director of Salem High School’s College and Career Center.

The program allows students “to really jump start their college career and for their families to save potentially a year of college tuition and fees without ever even touching their financial aid availability,” said David Crane, dean of the College of Continuing Studies at Bridgewater State University.

Bridgewater has about 360 students in its early college program, and an additional 90 dual enrollment students, Crane said. Dual enrollment students also earn college credit in high school, but they may have to pay for the credits and must work out the logistics on their own.

Edward Coelho, a senior at Framingham High School, expects to graduate with six college credits and is waiting to hear back from his three top schools: Amherst College, Emmanuel College, and Boston University.

Coelho, the son of Brazilian immigrants, said he has already learned from “fantastic professors” through the early college program. His parents have ingrained in him that “education is our gateway to a greater path,” and he is eager to pursue a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Coelho volunteers with younger students, weighing whether they could benefit from college. He believes three-year degree offerings would lead to “a great rise in people trying to get their bachelor’s degree.”

“A lot of kids don’t know if they can succeed in college and they don’t know what they want to do,” Coelho said. “I know a lot of kids who are struggling now, and they’re very scared if they go to college, it’ll be a waste of money, a waste of time.”

Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.

Grocery prices are rising. Rents are up. There is one product, though, that’s actually getting cheaper: marijuana.

The price of a gram of weed — the amount in a large joint — was down to just above $4, on average, in January, the latest continuation of a years-long nose-dive that has brought prices plummeting over 70 percent since pot stores first opened in Massachusetts in 2018. In those days, a gram cost more than $14.

“I’m taking advantage definitely,” Tori Wells, a Boston customer, said of current rock-bottom prices as she left downtown dispensary Pure Oasis one recent afternoon.

While consumers are happy, low prices have launched the industry into turmoil. It’s a far cry from the visions of wealth in cannabis that laid the foundation for many entrepreneurs to enter the industry and the state’s efforts at enriching Black and Latino communities that were targeted by the war on drugs.

“Profitability is tough to reach,” said Gabriel Vieira, CEO of Zyp Run, the first cannabis delivery service to open in Greater Boston in 2023. Delivery business licenses remain exclusive to equity operators, but many have struggled to find success. Just last month, Vieira’s company had to settle a state tax debt of more than $410,000 in order to continue operating this year, he said.

Marijuana growers and manufacturers said retail businesses are increasingly stiffing them on payments as money runs thin across the industry. There are signs that lawsuits, debts, and unpaid taxes are piling up, while business closures accelerate. Last fiscal year, 13 retail stores closed after either having their licenses revoked or choosing not to renew their licenses operations — more than in all previous years of legalization combined. And of the 71 cannabis business licenses of all kinds surrendered since recreational pot sales began, almost half were given up in the most recent fiscal year.

“Every state has a bottom, and we are in it,” said Derek Ross, CEO of Nova Farms, a company with six dispensaries across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and New Jersey, and hundreds of cultivation acres in the Northeast. “If we didn’t have opportunities in other states, we’d be struggling to keep our head above water.”

The industry’s dismal state is the result of an oversaturated market with too many marijuana plants being grown, said Commissioner Kimberly Roy, of the Cannabis Control Commission.

The commission is considering whether to freeze new cultivation licenses, with a public hearing on the matter likely soon. It’s a measure Roy supports.

“We need to hit the brakes,” Roy said. “Quite frankly, it’s overdue.”

By the end of 2025, the industry had the capacity to grow over 4.5 million square feet of cannabis plant canopy, up from 3.65 million in 2023.

Now cultivator competition is driving “razor-thin margins,” Roy added, and becoming a pain point for the entire industry.

Andrew Kazakoff, of Fathom Cannabis, a cultivator in West Boylston, said he supports a freeze on new growers.

“We need to take a halt,” Kazakoff said, adding: “Let the industry settle, work on itself, and come to equilibrium.”

As companies jockey for business there is also a “race to the bottom” on prices in the retail market that has led to “a lot of these businesses kind of cannibalizing each other,” said Ryan Dominguez, executive director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, a trade group. He added that a freeze could be a necessary step in righting the industry.

What’s happening in Massachusetts is something that other states have experienced, said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

Cannabis prices have fallen nationwide, particularly in early legalizing states such as Colorado, California, and Oregon, whose head start in infrastructure building has quickly turned to rampant oversupply. Oregon has imposed various pauses on its cannabis licensing dating back to 2018, with new license approvals of any kind currently banned.

“If you’re not going to limit the amount that’s produced, you should expect to see these price declines,” Kilmer said. Likewise, other New England states, including Connecticut and Maine, have retained higher prices than Massachusetts, the first pot stronghold on the East Coast and still its largest grower, since going legal.

The low prices mean cannabis businesses are mired in money problems, even as demand has continued to grow for their products. The number of cannabis sales that occurred last year increased by 8 percent over 2024, but revenues from those sales essentially plateaued, totaling around $1.65 billion for both 2024 and 2025.

Ross, the CEO of Nova Farms, said he cut 25 percent of his multi-state workforce in the last 18 months, as even diversified outfits have had to become “lean and mean,” to weather today’s market.

Two dozen companies, including four cultivators and 12 retailers, were in court-appointed receivership, the state’s legal alternative to bankruptcy, in January, according to commission data. More have been added since. Bankruptcy isn’t an option for cannabis companies as long as the drug remains federally illegal.

Designated as participating in “trafficking,” cannabis sellers also pay significantly more in federal taxes, often at rates of 60 to 80 percent, and are barred from making some regular deductible expenses.

Brian Keith, cofounder of Rooted In, said his Newbury Street dispensary, which opened in 2022, would be profitable if it weren’t for the heavy burden of the federal tax code, which places the most strain on retail stores.

He filed his taxes on time this year but didn’t have the funds, he said, and now it may take over 12 months to settle over $170,000 in outstanding debts through a payment plan with the IRS.

“We’re seeing the same number of people walking through the door, but less revenue,” Keith said.

Keith is a member of the state’s social equity program, aimed at helping communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs build wealth.

His company has raised more than a quarter million dollars from communities of color in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan to fund its initial operations, he said, but the profits he planned to bring back to those communities haven’t materialized because of the prices plummeting.

Keith’s business is one of about 100 owned by people in the state’s two equity programs — about 15 percent of all open businesses in the state. Many of these entrepreneurs are struggling to make ends meet, the Globe has reported.

The CCC has approved a framework to allow the opening of marijuana lounges, giving exclusive access to equity entrepreneurs and smaller operations, though that rollout is just getting off the ground.

Many cannabis cultivators and manufacturers are seeing an escalating issue of unpaid debts.

Kazakoff, the grower in West Boylston, said half his orders last year were not paid on time by retailers, and a few not at all. That was barely a problem before 2025, he said.

“I grapple with the fact every single month of: Do I stay in business when I’m not getting paid by dispensaries?” he said. “Or how am I going to pay my employees?”

Currently, the CCC has no authority to police these business-to-business transactions, Commissioner Roy said, though she said it’s time for them to try and address it. Cannabis reform bills pending in the State House and Senate look to reshape cannabis regulations, including by mirroring alcohol enforcement, by restricting delinquent companies to having to pay their bills as soon as they receive products and publishing their names. Both versions of the legislation would also dissolve the current five-member cannabis commission, replacing it with a smaller three-member body.

Cultivators such as Kris Foley, CEO of Berkshire Roots, have taken matters into their own hands, initiating legal action to retrieve funds he said he is owed from around a half dozen retailers.

“A lot of partners that we worked with early on, they were good payers,” but that changed suddenly, said Foley, who runs two Pittsfield cultivation facilities and a nearby dispensary, as well as another shop in East Boston. He hasn’t been paid on time for between $150,000 and $200,000 worth of product since 2024.

Nova Farms has been shorted payment for an estimated $4.5 million in product in Massachusetts in the past two years, far more than its other states, Ross said.

Steve Reilly, co-owner and head of government relations at INSA, a large cannabis operator in Massachusetts and four other states, worries that debt issues in the industry have driven away investment.

“Most of these companies are just struggling to keep the lights on and they’re doing what they can do,” he said. “But as they’re doing that, they’re dragging everybody else down.”

Bryan Hecht can be reached at bryan.hecht@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @bhechtjournalism.