Last month, the U.S. Department of Education released details regarding the number of dually enrolled high school students disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender.
I’ve written about dual enrollment for the “Higher Ed Policy” blog before and for The Conversation. I also referenced dual enrollment a couple of weeks ago in relation to declining enrollments at regional comprehensive public colleges and universities and the fact that dually enrolled high school students are increasingly making up a larger percentage of community college enrollments.
At Boston University, I work closely with the Boston Public Schools, and I am active in the space where the PK-12 sector connects and/or overlaps with higher education, and dual enrollment is in that space. Across the country, dual enrollment is continuing to grow in the P-20 space, and much, but not all, of that growth is happening at community colleges.
John Fink at the Community College Research Center covered the U.S. Department of Education’s release. Here are some of his highlights from the report for the 2022–23 academic year:
- Approximately 2.5 million high school students took at least one college course through dual enrollment in AY22–23.
- Community colleges are doing the heavy lift here, with 1.78 million high school students representing 21 percent of the overall enrollments at community colleges.
- In two states, Idaho and Indiana, high school students made up more than 50 percent of the community college enrollments.
- White students were more likely to be dually enrolled, making up 52 percent of high school dual enrollment compared to 45 percent of undergraduate enrollment over all (and 44 percent of K-12 enrollment).
- Black students are underrepresented, making up only 8 percent of those dually enrolled compared to 13 percent of undergraduate enrollment and 15 percent of public K-12 enrollment.
- In four states—Idaho, Indiana, Iowa and Wyoming—approximately one-quarter of all undergraduate enrollment is actually made up of dually enrolled high school students.
- When it comes to four-year public colleges and universities, high school students are making a dent in these enrollment figures as well. In Idaho, 28 percent of undergraduate enrollment in four-year public colleges is made up of high school students, and 26 percent of Utah’s is. Missouri has 22 percent and Maine and Minnesota each have 20 percent.
If you are interested in this topic, John has a fantastic set of interactive tools that drill down to the state and institution levels. Very cool and eye-opening!
Over all, it’s encouraging to see dual enrollment on the rise. The more we use a framework that utilizes a P-16 set of education policies, the better. EdTrust’s Wil Del Pilar summarized this work nicely in a post earlier this summer.
Dual enrollment is one method for providing access to advanced coursework, and as Del Pilar points out, studies have shown that dual enrollment increases the chances of successfully transitioning to and completing college. When dual-enrollment courses are part of college and career readiness and postsecondary pathways—as with early-college programs—this becomes an even more powerful set of levers to support middle and high school students to successfully graduate from high school and transition to college.
The equity gaps in access to dual enrollment are alarming but, unfortunately, not surprising. It’s crucial that we make sure that all students have equitable access to dual-enrollment opportunities, and having the ability to analyze dual-enrollment data disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender is an important step toward closing equity gaps. I also urge us to critically review access (and barriers) to advanced coursework opportunities like dual-enrollment courses for multilingual learners and students with disabilities, two additional groups of students who have historically been passed over when it comes to access to advanced coursework. As always, it is crucial that we look at the intersectionality of these student groupings and realize that students are often situated in more than one of these categories at the same time.
Here in Boston, Roxbury Community College has partnered with Boston Public Schools to provide an early-college dual-enrollment opportunity for multilingual learners. Last spring, I had the privilege of attending the first graduation ceremony for the students in this program and got to hear from the high school students who had successfully completed their first college courses. One young woman was able to tell her success story in three languages: English, French and Haitian Creole. While those in the room were awed by her linguistic abilities, too often our schools define literacy in terms of English only.
Multilingual learners represent 10.4 percent of PK‐12 students and are the fastest‐growing group of students in the United States. My colleague Yasko Kanno has done fantastic work on barriers to access to college for multilingual learners, including barriers to accessing advanced coursework while in high school.
Supporting the success of dually enrolled high school students requires a high level of cooperation between PK-12 and higher education and, ideally, a coordinated strategy at the state or federal levels. As college-going rates in the U.S. continue to decline, dual-enrollment programs offer an innovative solution with the potential to reverse some of these declines. Dual enrollment is here to stay, and it is going to continue to expand not only in raw numbers but as a percentage of college enrollments. I also predict we will see dual enrollment expand in the ninth and 10th grades and, potentially, in the seventh and eighth.
