Dual enrollment, which allows students to complete college coursework and earn transferrable credits while still enrolled in high school, is a popular and growing pathway into postsecondary education. For many students, it also offers a way to take more advanced courses during high school and is often seen as an alternative to longstanding means such as Advance Placement and International Baccalaureate. Nearly every state now has formal programs for facilitating dual enrollment (DE), and the number of dual enrollees has tripled in the past twenty years. However, research lags on the effectiveness of DE in getting students to and through college. A recent report tries to bolster the research base.
A team of analysts from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University looks at national and state-by-state data on the postsecondary enrollment and degree completion outcomes of three groups of students who first enrolled in college in fall 2015. They are: DE students—high schoolers who enrolled at a postsecondary institution for the first time in fall of 2015 in order to take college courses while still attending high school; prior dual enrollment (PDE) students—new college freshmen who enrolled in fall 2015 after their high school graduation and had records of postsecondary enrollment while in high school; and non-dual-enrollment (non-DE) students—new college freshmen who enrolled after high school graduation but had no prior DE experience. The analysts use National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data for most demographic and postsecondary institutional data and include neighborhood income data from the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate family income based on home addresses.
The sample comprised 3.6 million students from across the country. In the fall of 2015, 62 percent were non-DE students, 25 percent were PDE students, and 13 percent were DE students. All students were followed for four years after high school graduation, which means DE students were followed for a longer period of time than their peers. While the findings are largely just a snapshot of the college-going behaviors of each group—rather than any kind of controlled trial to determine causation—the report does offer some interesting comparisons.
Overall, the analysts find confirmation of widespread DE participation across states. However, just ten states (including California, New York, Washington, and Fordham’s home state of Ohio, among others) accounted for over half of all new DE students nationally in fall 2015. Texas was the top dog, with nearly twice as many students as the second-place state, New York. Community colleges enrolled 1.6 million students in the sample, with 60 percent of those students having PDE experience or being current DE students. By contrast, only 20 percent of the 2 million students who enrolled at four-year colleges had current or prior DE participation. DE students were highly likely to re-enroll in college for at least one semester after high school graduation, with 81 percent of those doing so within a year. In forty-one states, the re-enrollment rate for DE students exceeded 33 percent. In the top states, it was nearly half. The majority of re-enrollers (51 percent) opted for a four-year institution.
The remainder of the detailed analyses focus specifically on the DE students in the sample, with no further comparisons to the other groups included. Some examples: Forty-two percent of DE students went on to complete a college degree or certification within four years of finishing high school. Twenty-nine percent completed a bachelor’s degree, 10 percent completed an associate degree, and 2 percent completed a short-term certificate. Four years after high school, almost a third of DE students were still enrolled in college but had not yet earned a degree or certificate. In 41 states, DE students who enrolled in college right after high school had higher college completion rates than their non-DE peers. These outcomes were strongest in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and New Jersey. Even stronger outcomes were seen for students who participated in DE at four-year institutions and who then went on to matriculate at four-year schools. However, this population was less likely to live in a lower-income neighborhood or to be Black or Hispanic than their community college DE peers.
There’s lots more to dig into here, including the state-by-state comparisons along various data points. The bottom line for these analysts is that dual enrollment in high school appears to be a reliable pathway into college for all types of students. It also appears to function as a booster toward on-time degree completion. The analysts conclude that states could increase DE access to more high schoolers in the hopes of spreading more of its benefits around. But they also note that state leaders should closely monitor their own data to make sure that completion rates are reasonable and that students are not being set up to fail (at potentially great cost). The bottom line for research, however, is that causal links are still desperately needed to really establish whether dual enrollment is truly fulfilling its promise of access to college and degree completion—not to mention the various “flavors” of dual enrollment which have varying levels of availability and outcomes, which are not differentiated here at all.
SOURCE: Tatiana Velasco et al, “The Postsecondary Outcomes of High School Dual Enrollment Students: A National and State-by-State Analysis,” Community College Research Center (October 2024).
