Dual enrollment (DE) is a catch-all term for the means by which students earn college credit while still in high school (or middle school). But that singular term covers a number of pathways with varying structures and delivery models. Do those differences impact student outcomes? And can program structure help ensure quality? A new report sought to find out.
A trio of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin examined data from the Lone Star State, which leads the nation in DE participation. Specifically, they identified over 108,250 high school students who entered ninth grade at traditional districts in 2015 or 2016 and who took at least one DE course within four years. The analysis focuses solely on DE delivered by a community college, thereby excluding any four-year institutions, and does not include students attending charter schools or any district school that integrated early college curricula with high school coursework. Although this results in an incomplete picture of the DE landscape, the findings are numerous and interesting. Here are a handful of important nuggets:
- The vast majority of students in the sample (81 percent) took only academic courses (the researchers’ term, covering things like English, biology, and psychology), while another 12 percent chose only career and technical education (CTE) courses like construction management and HVAC technology. The remaining 7 percent took a mix of both types of courses.
- Higher-achieving high schoolers (identified based on average State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness scores) favored academic-only college courses.
- The vast majority of DE students began taking college courses in eleventh and twelfth grade, but a larger proportion of CTE-only students (17 percent) started in ninth or tenth grade. The researchers note that this is likely due to the lower readiness requirements for CTE courses at the community college level.
- A large majority of both academic and CTE courses were taken solely in-person, versus online or hybrid. Only 10 percent of CTE and 34 percent of academic DE sections were offered solely online.
- Fifty-six percent of the in-person CTE courses taken by students were delivered on college campuses, 32 percent on high school campuses, and 12 percent at other locations. Approximately 46 percent of in-person academic DE courses were delivered on college campuses, 32 percent at high schools, and 22 percent at other locations.
- For both course types, the majority of DE sections were comprised exclusively of high school students. Academic courses, however, were more likely to include both high schoolers and college students.
- Forty-five percent of academic course sections were taught by non-tenure-track (NTT) community college faculty, 37 percent were taught by high school teachers, and 12 percent were taught by tenure-track (TT) or already-tenured faculty. For CTE courses, 46 percent were taught by high school teachers, with 43 percent taught by NTT college faculty and just 8 percent by TT/tenured faculty.
As for student learning, taking courses too early, mixing college undergrads with high school DE students, and taking courses fully online are all negatively associated with course passage and final grade. For example, regression models show that taking a DE course in ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades are all negatively associated with course completion and course grades compared to waiting to take the same DE class in twelfth grade. This holds true for both academic and CTE courses. Interestingly, the researchers hypothesize that stronger course outcomes among high school seniors may be related to better programmatic support for them (from both their high school and college teachers/counselors) at that point in time—closer to actual college-going—than to issues of student readiness. However, lack of student preparation and readiness for college courses cannot be ruled out for any of the negative outcomes.
For academic DE courses, taking the course somewhere other than the student’s high school (like on a college campus) is negatively associated with passing the course and with their final grade. For students in CTE DE courses, taking the course at the college rather than at the high school is also negatively correlated with final grade, but taking the CTE course at another location—not the high school or a college—positively predicts both course passage and final grade.
Having a college instructor rather than a high school teacher is generally associated with a lower probability of passing the course and a lower final grade. Students in academic course sections with full-time NTT instructors experienced a 1.6-percentage-point decrease in their probability of passing the course and a 0.04-unit decrease in final grade, compared with students in sections with high school teachers. The only exception is that, for academic courses, taking DE with a part-time NTT faculty member instead of a high school teacher is positively associated with course grade, although it negatively predicts passing the course.
As to future college-going, passing a DE course is associated with an 11.9-percentage-point increase in the probability of a student enrolling in any Texas postsecondary institution after high school for students taking academic DE courses, and a 10.0-percentage-point increase for those taking CTE DE courses. Academic DE students enrolling in college tend to opt for four-year institutions, while their CTE counterparts tend to opt for community colleges. Taking DE courses early in high school (before 12th grade) is negatively correlated with enrolling in any Texas college, but the relationship is only significant for CTE DE students.
Limitations of the research include the absence of charter school students and early-college high school students—to say nothing of four-year colleges—as well as a focus on final grades and course passage to the exclusion of all other possible measures of quality. There is some analysis of differentiation of outcomes per various instructor types, but no data to indicate whether DE provided at high schools by high school teachers might have lower standards than DE courses taken on college campuses and taught by professors. More research is needed to get the true picture of the value of DE in all its forms. But some takeaways might be worth the attention of high schools and postsecondary institutions: Students appear to need a lot of support to excel in tough classes, class location and teachers can impact outcomes, and that online-only classes are not the ideal means for launching most high schoolers successfully into the college world, even if they do expand DE access.
SOURCE: Wonsun Ryu, Lauren Schudde, and Kimberly Pack-Cosme, “Dually Noted: Examining the Implications of Dual Enrollment Course Structure for Students’ Course and College Enrollment Outcomes,” American Educational Research Journal (July 2024).
