Study after study shows the benefits of dual enrollment, or partnerships that allow students to take college courses while in high school. Dual enrollment allows students to get ahead and ease into college with a familiar, supportive framework. But the experts who analyze these programs are still asking themselves how to design these opportunities to serve the students who need them most.
Dual enrollment has been on the rise for years now. The number of high school students in college courses rose about 67% between 2002 and 2010, according to a study by the Community College Research Center. A 2019 report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that about a third of high school students took courses for college credit in the fall of 2009, when the data was collected.
These programs are popular for a reason: Dual enrollment has an impressive track record for enrolling and graduating students.
“Across the board, former dual enrollment students are going to college at higher rates,” says John Fink, senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, located at the Columbia University Teachers College.
Findings from Fink’s study on dual enrollment at community colleges released in 2017 revealed that 88% of students in dual enrollment programs went to college, and significant percentages earned a degree within five years — 46% of the students who enrolled in community colleges and 64% of those who enrolled in four-year colleges. The study tracked almost 200,000 high school students from the fall of 2010 to the summer of 2016.
But alas, not all of the data was as rosy. The study also found gaps in degree attainment for low-income students and the study also found that completion rates varied widely by state.
There’s a “strong foundation of research” to back up the benefits of dual enrollment, Fink says, but the next pressing question is, “Who’s benefitting?”
The research has turned from asking, “Does dual enrollment work to who’s it working for and how can we improve the benefits given there’s so much variation?” he adds.
