Dual enrollment courses are considered some of the best ways to prepare students for the rigor and content in college-level curricula.
Not only do these courses offer students a jump-start on credits once they get to college, but they also equip them with skills like time management, critical thinking and study habits that researchers say encourage them to enroll and stay in college.
The number of dually enrolled students has boomed in recent years. According to a 2024 study from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teacher College, dual enrollment increased by 46 percent from 2015 to 2021, and another 18 percent from 2021 to 2023.
Research shows that it can also be difficult to access these courses, though, especially for students of color and those from lower income areas. Often state policies require students to take complicated exams or pay to take the classes. Some areas may not have enough qualified teachers to offer them.
This data has broadened education researchers’ understanding of dual enrollment programs, including how access varies from state to state and which subjects are the most crucial for dual enrollment.
When done correctly, experts say, dual enrollment can be a critical pathway from high school to college, especially as today’s high school seniors are less prepared to move to higher education. Most education experts agree that to make dual enrollment work, K-12 schools, higher education institutions and state governments must work together to improve access to the courses and ensure that all students can take advantage of them.
Barriers to Entry
Dual enrollment can save students money and time, says John Fink, a senior research associate at Columbia’s community college research center and one of the lead authors of the dual enrollment study. It can also help students explore deeper-level content before they get to college. Beyond that, the classes help students see that they have the skills and knowledge to pursue a college degree, he says.
In the Columbia study, researchers tracked students who began taking dual enrollment courses in 2015 through the four years after they graduated high school. According to their findings, 81 percent of students who took dual enrollment courses in 2015 went to college the first year after high school and 42 percent completed college four years after finishing high school.
“The pure confidence-building of doing well and succeeding in a college course, having a college instructor tell you that you can do this, that you’re a college student — that boost of confidence is one of the first things people will say is the power of these courses,” Fink says.
The study showed that low-income, Black, and Hispanic students are significantly underrepresented in dual enrollment programs. Barriers to access vary from state to state, Fink says. In about half of the country, for instance, students have to pay to take the courses. Some states have eligibility requirements, such as passing a standardized test.
Mindset and messaging can also limit access, Fink says. In some areas, the courses aren’t prioritized. Educational leaders may not reach out to underserved schools or underrepresented communities, so students don’t know about them.
Even those who have heard of them may assume that dual enrollment courses are only for wealthier, higher level students, Fink says.
“The internalized messaging from communities of color and low income communities that, ‘I don't know if this whole, like, dual enrollment thing is for me’” becomes a barrier when students are looking at their options in high school, Fink adds.
Beyond policy and messaging, districts also struggle to find qualified teachers for the courses, a problem that has been exacerbated by teacher shortages across the country, Fink says.
Bethany Usher, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Radford University, noticed this trend of under-qualified dual-enrollment teachers among southwest Virginia schools, where many students come from low-income households and would be the first in their family to attend college.
In order to be certified to teach dual enrollment courses through a community college, high school instructors must have at least 18 graduate-level credits in the subject matter they’d be teaching, Usher says. A biology teacher, for example, would need 18 graduate-level biology credits. Often, though, teachers have pedagogical-focused graduate degrees and probably didn’t take that type of specific course-work.
This leaves many students without the option to take dual enrollment, which means they may not ever realize that college is an option for them, Usher says. “But by being able to take students who are motivated and put them in these dual-enrollment classes, you get a greater percentage of those who are going to recognize they’ve got the ability and [will] go to college,” she adds.
Better Certification Track
So Usher and her colleagues at Radford are working to expand a teacher certification program with the aim of improving access to dual enrollment in southwest Virginia schools.
The certification classes are entirely online, asynchronous or taught after 5 p.m., and target professionals who already have a master’s degree, says Agida Manizade, Radford’s interim assistant provost for graduate affairs.
The college’s staff also is looking into creative, hands-on methods for teachers to bring material to their classrooms in ways that will prepare their students for higher education. For instance, an instructor developing an ecology course will send kits to the teachers, who can then conduct lab work at home, Manizade says. Later, the teachers can meet with their instructors to discuss the lab.
Students need to be prepared both for more advanced content and a college-ready mindset.
“The mindset is the part we can’t control as much,” Usher says, “but we’re trying to model that for the teachers so that they’re teaching in a way that’s going to help students prepare for college.”
The program also targets knowledge and training gaps in local schools. Radford staff often coordinate with principals to determine which general education subjects are lacking certified teachers. Currently, the program offers a math program and could soon include biology, English, and potentially physics or psychology.
“It is important that it is a collaboration,” Usher says. “We have to look at all of this: What do the high schools need? What do the community colleges need? And then, what can we offer?”
Experts encourage dual enrollment programs to focus on crucial subjects like math. A study from the Public Policy Institute of California found that the number of students enrolling in dual enrollment math courses has more than doubled over the past decade. Students in these courses enroll in college at higher rates, according to the study.
But college math courses are often the “gatekeeper classes” — tough classes that are prerequisites for programs of study — that prevent students from earning a degree, says Olga Rodriguez, director of the PPIC’s higher education center and a primary author on the report.
Many high school seniors don’t take a math course, Rodriguez says, so when they get to college, they’ve lost much of the knowledge they need to build upon in college math classes. Students also may put off required math courses once they get to college, which worsens their learning loss. Expanding access to dual enrollment math courses in high school helps students stay prepared for college, even if they aren’t entering a STEM field.
“Dual enrollment is really about expanding access and especially to populations who have not been as well served by dual enrollment in the past,” Rodriguez says. “We know there are key courses that are limiting opportunity, that are gatekeepers, because we know that they’re posing challenges [to] students achieving their goals.”
Despite the many barriers to dual enrollment programs that still exist, several states and school districts are working harder to spread the word to get more students interested in trying them.
“There's continued investment in these programs in red and blue states in terms of the funding,” Fink says.
In some districts, students learn about dual enrollment in middle school, so they are already prepared to dual-enroll once they reach high school. Other districts have community organizations demonstrate how dual enrollment can help students outside high school.
At the same time, schools can consider embedding dual enrollment into a default high-school track so it’s not solely reserved for high achievers, Fink says.
Many colleges draw high enrollment numbers from dual enrollment students, Fink says, “so they’re really rethinking how they’re staffing and funding these programs to implement them not just as an acceleration strategy, but as a college-access strategy.”
