Unpacking Dual Enrollment: Benefits, Barriers, and Opportunities for Expansion

Much has been made in recent years about stark drops in college enrollments and declining public trust in higher education. While many headlines have painted a grim picture of higher education in America, there’s one area of postsecondary education experiencing robust and rapid growth: dual enrollment. Dual enrollment, also known as dual credit, is the practice of high-school students taking college-level courses in high school through a partnership with a higher education institution, earning both high school and college credit for their coursework. Many states use different terms to describe this practice and state models can vary. For the sake of simplicity, this blog will use the term dual enrollment to refer broadly to all programs that allow students to earn high school and college credits simultaneously.

Dual enrollment’s growth in recent years has been particularly strong. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education suggest that in the 2022-23 school year, about 2.5 million high school students took at least one dual enrollment course, about 16% of all high schoolers in the country that year. In 2021, estimates put annual enrollments at 1.4 million. The more detailed data available at the state level similarly indicates rapid growth over the past decade, not only in the number of dual enrollment participants but also in the average number of dual enrollment credits earned per student.

Research shows that dual enrollment yields positive outcomes for students. It is associated with higher rates of college enrollment, persistence, and completion and with earning higher wages after high school. Evidence suggests that the more dual credits a student takes, the better their chances of reaping these rewards.

Importantly, dual enrollment seems to provide these benefits to students regardless of race or socioeconomic status. While research is mixed on whether Black and Latinx students benefit from dual enrollment more than white and Asian students, evidence increasingly shows that dual enrollment’s returns for low-income students are slightly higher than for wealthier students. These findings suggest that dual enrollment can be a strong equity strategy for expanding access to higher education, easing students’ transition to college, and putting them on a course to graduation.

Perhaps the most highly-touted benefit of dual enrollment is its ability to save students time and money. But the extent to which it actually does so can vary considerably and depends on program design, number of credits earned, and college choice. Dual enrollment credits are most likely to save students money when a) students can take them at no- or low-cost, b) they are transferable to the student’s college of choice and c) once transferred, they count towards the student’s degree or program of study. For example, if a dual enrollment student later attends a high-cost, selective university that accepts few dual enrollment credits, then the student may not save money or graduate any faster than if they had not earned those credits.

Dual enrollment is popular and growing, but access to dual enrollment — and the benefits that flow from it — is still far from universal. While white students are overrepresented in dual enrollment, Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, and English learners are consistently underrepresented.

Dual enrollment options are less prevalent in schools primarily serving low-income students or students of color, and researchers point to a lack of funding for dual enrollment as the main culprit. When states don’t provide sufficient funding for dual enrollment options, high schools and colleges might not offer it at all, or if they do, the costs of tuition, textbooks, and other materials may fall to students, putting it out of reach for some.

Research also shows that a lack of information about dual enrollment also prevents many students, especially low-income students and students of color, from participating. Often, information barriers arise from inadequate — or non-existent — advising about dual enrollment options.

Another major barrier to dual enrollment access: finding instructors who are qualified to teach college-level courses in high school. While there are multiple delivery options for dual enrollment, the majority of classes are taught at high schools, either by college faculty or by high school instructors deemed qualified by a higher education partner. This usually requires a master’s degree in the academic subject area (or a master’s degree in another field and graduate coursework in the subject area) — a relative rarity among public high school teachers. As dual enrollment’s popularity has soared, the shortage of qualified instructors has become more pronounced and the need to upskill high school faculty more urgent. Finding and implementing solutions to this shortage is key to expanding access to dual enrollment for all students.

While addressing barriers to access is important, it is crucial to also keep an eye on quality. When dual enrollment is openly available without considering quality, time and money can be lost. Simply expanding access to weak programs could widen existing equity gaps versus addressing them.

A foundational element to quality dual enrollment is strong partnerships among secondary and postsecondary institutions. Many secondary and postsecondary partners sign articulation agreements and memoranda of understanding to outline roles and responsibilities, but fewer have established deep partnerships that go beyond the necessities to ensure alignment across programming, shared resources, and strategy development. These coordination efforts can increase postsecondary matriculation rates and improve student outcomes by providing transferable college credit that accelerates their progress toward a credential.

Effective college and career advising matters too. Knowledgeable, well-trained, school counselors and advisors can promote intentional dual enrollment that improves postsecondary attainment rates and, ultimately, student outcomes.

The good news is that many states have established infrastructure to support high-quality dual enrollment at scale. In Texas, the College and Career Readiness School Models (CCRSMs) provide blueprints and key performance indicators for Early College High School (ECHS) and Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) programs. Using state funds, Texas designates and incentivizes well-performing districts and has established state-level infrastructure to support fidelity of implementation. The state has seen much success through CCRSMs, and today many Texas students are graduating with an associate degree or industry certification in addition to their high school diploma.

Tennessee’s Innovative School Models also incentivize local implementation of quality college and career readiness programs. One innovative outcome is the development of Dual Enrollment Work-Based Courses that allow students to earn both college credit and a work-based learning experience simultaneously.

With the growing demand for dual enrollment, the federal government can play an important role in addressing barriers to access, while also prioritizing quality. For example, the Biden administration’s $7.2 billion Classroom to Career proposal would fund 12 free career-connected dual enrollment credits for all interested high school students. The proposal focuses on expanding access for students who are underrepresented in dual enrollment and includes money for key supportive services like counseling and teacher credentialing.

Even if this proposal isn’t enacted by Congress, the federal government can continue supporting quality dual enrollment by providing more support for state and local education agencies to establish infrastructure to support expanded access to high-quality dual enrollment. The Unlocking Career Success initiative, a joint project of the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor, and Commerce, is another high-potential approach with room for expansion. At minimum, these agencies could use the Unlocking Career Success platform to communicate a clear vision to the field about what quality dual enrollment looks like. And if funding permits, they could even leverage the initiative to provide states with technical assistance and grants geared at advancing high-quality program models, such as ECHS and P-TECH, that include not only dual enrollment, but also advising, work-based learning, and strong education and workforce partnerships.

Not every barrier to dual enrollment access is one that the federal government can, or should, help solve. States will need to do heavy lifting to ensure equitable access to dual enrollment through high-quality pathways. However, the federal government can drive the vision for dual enrollment and address gaps in funding — key steps to ensure all students, especially the most underserved, can accelerate their path to postsecondary education and a meaningful career.