The fact that students with dual enrollment credits do better than students without dual enrollment credits is not particularly convincing. To qualify for the classes, students usually have to do well on a test, get high grades, or be advanced or honors in school. These high-achieving students would likely graduate from college in much greater numbers without any dual enrollment courses.
“Are we subsidizing students who were always going to go to college?” asked Kristen Hengtgen, a policy analyst at EdTrust, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that lobbies for racial and economic equity in education. “Could we have spent the time, energy and effort differently on higher quality teachers or something else? I think that’s a really important issue.”
Hengtgen was not involved in this latest analysis, but is concerned about the severe underrepresentation of black and Latino students that the report highlights. A data board documents accompanying the new report that only 9 percent of high school students in dual enrollment classes are black, while black students make up 16 percent of high school students. Only 17 percent of dual enrollment students were Hispanic at a time when Hispanic students made up nearly a quarter of the high school population. White students, by contrast, occupy 65 percent of dual-enrollment spots, but make up only half of the high school population. Asian students were the only group whose participation in dual enrollment matched their share of the student population: 5 percent each.
Proponents of dual enrollment have argued that an early sense of college can motivate students to go to college, and the fact that so few black and Latino students are enrolling is perhaps the most troubling sign that massive public and private investments in education are not fulfills one of its main goals: to expand the workforce with higher education.
EdTrust’s Hengtgen argues that black, Hispanic and low-income students of all races need better high school counseling to help them enroll in classes. Sometimes, she said, students don’t know they have to take a required class in 10th grade to be eligible for a dual-enrollment class in 11th grade, and by the time they know, it’s too late. Cost is another barrier. Depending on the state and county, a family may have to pay a fee to take the classes. Although these fees are usually much cheaper than what students pay for a course, low-income families may still not be able to afford them.
Tatiana Velasco, an economist at the CCRC and lead author of the October 2024 Dual Enrollment Report, makes the case that dual enrollment may be most beneficial to black, Latino, and low-income students of all races and ethnicities. In her analysis of the data, she noted that dual enrollment credits provided only a modest boost to students overall, but a very large boost to some demographic groups.
Among all high school students who enrolled in college right out of high school, 36 percent of those with dual enrollment credits earned a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to 34 percent without dual enrollment credits. Arguably, dual enrollment credits do not make a huge difference in time to graduation on average.
However, Velasco found much greater benefits from dual enrollment when he disaggregated the data by race and income. Among black students who enrolled immediately in college, 29 percent of those who earned dual enrollment credits completed a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to only 18 percent of those without dual enrollment credits. That’s more than a 50 percent increase in college achievement. “The difference is huge,” Velasco said.
Among Latino students who went straight to college, 25 percent of those with dual credit enrollment earned a bachelor’s degree within four years. Only 19 percent of Latino non-credit dual enrollment students did so. Dual enrollment also appeared to be particularly beneficial for students from low-income neighborhoods; 28 percent of them earned a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to just 20 percent without dual enrollment.
Again, it is not yet clear whether dual enrollment accounts for these differences. It is possible that black students who chose to take dual enrollment classes were already more motivated and higher achieving and still graduated from college in much higher numbers. (In particular, black students with dual credit enrollment are more likely to attend select four-year institutions.)
There is wide variation across the nation in how dual enrollment works in high schools. c most caseshigh schoolers never set foot in college. Often the class is taught in a high school classroom by a high school teacher. Sometimes community colleges provide instructors. English composition and college algebra are popular offerings. Courses are typically designed and credits awarded by a community college, although 30 percent of dual enrollment credits are awarded by four-year institutions.
A few other takeaways from the CCRC and National Student Clearinghouse report:
- States with very high college graduation rates from their dual enrollment programs, such as Delaware, Georgia, Mississippi, and New Jersey, tend to serve fewer black, Hispanic, and low-income students. Florida stood out as an exception. CCRC’s Velasco noted that it has both strong college graduation rates while serving a slightly higher percentage of Latino students.
- In Iowa, Texas and Washington, half of all dual enrollment students ended up going to the college that awarded their dual enrollment credits.
- In Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin, dual enrollment students have become a huge source of prospective students for community colleges. (A a separate cost study shows that some community colleges provide dual enrollment courses to a nearby high school at a loss, but if those students subsequently matriculate, their future tuition dollars can offset those losses.)
And this is perhaps the most troubling unintended consequence of the explosion of dual enrollment credits. Many smart high school students accumulate three, four, or even five classes of college credit and feel pressure to take advantage of those credits by enrolling in the community college that partners with their high school. This may seem like a reasonable solution. It is unclear whether these dual enrollment credits can be transferred to another school or, more importantly, count toward a student’s major requirements, which is what really matters and prevents students from graduating on time.
But many of those students could get into their state flagship or even a highly selective private college on a scholarship. And they will be better off. Dual enrollment students who started at a community college, according to the report, were much less likely than those who enrolled at a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree four years after high school.
