How Dual Enrollment/Early College Has Changed (opinion)

When I started writing a book about early college and dual enrollment five years ago, my proposed title was High School for Young Hamiltons (neither my family nor the book’s publisher approved). This idea was based on the parallel between the pluck and elan that are characteristic of both the early-college students I worked with and that of America’s hardest-working founding father. Five years after I wrote the book, I had the opportunity to revisit the field for a revised edition, making it appropriate to ask, after Thomas Jefferson’s song in the second act of Hamilton, “What’d I Miss”: How has early college/dual enrollment changed over the past half decade?

Before I start to answer that, first, a note on terminology: I use “dual enrollment” as an umbrella term for students who are earning credit in high school and college for the same class, whether taught in high school or on a campus, and “early college” for structured programs with dedicated student support, often taught on a college campus.

An Expanding Field

The first change in the field that I would not have predicted five years ago is the massive and consistent growth of dual-enrollment and early-college enrollment. States such as Idaho, Indiana and Ohio have built enormous dual-enrollment programs quickly, and other states such as Maryland and New York have expanded efforts as well. When I started my book on dual enrollment in 2020, people in the field believed we were working with more than a million students in total, but there was no clear number from the federal government. The new dual-enrollment count on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System is more than 2.8 million students, a clear jump forward in a short period of time.

I also did not grasp at the time that dual enrollment and early college would grow in terms of the number of models being offered. Concurrent enrollment, in which qualified high school faculty are vetted by colleges to teach in their high school building for college credit, is the easiest model to scale up quickly. In the past half decade, more concurrent programs have been founded or expanded, and many have sought accreditation through the National Alliance of Concurrent Education Partnerships, which has become an important policy force in the field.

But other models have thrived as well: These include on-campus dual-enrollment and early-college programs, Bard College’s urban early-college high schools, wall-to-wall programs (every student taking early college, in grades nine to 12), P-Tech programs (early college plus career and technical education plus internships), as well as enrollments of homeschooling high school students and even students signing up to take a single class at a college. Many universities and colleges balance more than one model at once, trying to gauge what is distinct about each model and the population that thrives in them. However, no single model has been able to become dominant, and the field seems poised to continue this diversity of models for the foreseeable future.

The Shift to Large-Scale Intervention

When I wrote the first edition of my book, I tried to capture the tension between the roots of the field in gifted education and its growth as a more urban, inclusive intervention. Since then, there has been an eclipse of the original gifted education model—instead of offering dual enrollment and early college primarily as intellectual enrichment, the field has evolved more toward career and guided pathway programs.

Borrowed from the community college world, guided pathways are a way to channel students into a series of classes, leading to smooth transfer or employment outcomes. This intervention has had mostly positive results for both community college and early-college programs, and many in the field have built more flexibility into their programs to better meet the needs of students. Even if programs do not fully embrace guided pathways, the idea of clustering and sequencing early-college and dual-enrollment offerings has expanded, away from offering one-course-at-a-time opportunities or relying on generic general education requirements.

Alongside this movement for guided pathways, early-college/dual-enrollment programs have integrated both more career and technical education and more work-integrated learning. When I was first writing about the field, there were programs that were ahead of their time in working with employer partners and bringing real-world issues and problems to students. In the past five years, this connection to employers and the workforce has become closer to an expectation for the field.

Increased Confidence and Creativity

What has changed most in the field of dual enrollment/early college over the past few years is its confidence. Five years ago, early-college and dual-enrollment programs often struggled to articulate what aspects of their practice were most valuable, and the field is now better able to distinguish itself from other high school reform programs. NACEP has focused on instructor professional development and connections between high school instructors and college faculty as a key selling point of the model. The level of connection that college faculty and high school instructors can develop through dual-enrollment and early-college programs is unique in American education, different than the Advanced Placement program and other high school reform efforts. Using early-college and dual-enrollment programs as a lever to improve teacher credentials is also a growing area of innovation in the field (the work of the Alamo Colleges here to grow the pool of eligible instructors is transformational).

The field has also maintained and expanded its grassroots creativity. It is the people on the ground in early college and dual enrollment who are responsible for the effectiveness of this model. The most innovative ideas in early college and dual enrollment have never emerged from research centers and scholarly research—they have come from talented and creative practitioners, who push the envelope of what is possible in existing programs.

Tomorrow’s Hamiltons

Many of the students I featured in the book agreed to talk to me for the updated edition, and to see the shifts in their lives has been inspiring. Simona Santiago, whom I featured in my STEM chapter of the original book, has moved into college access work for her career. Many of the students I profiled from Lawrence, Mass., went on immediately to a master’s degree after college and are now starting their job search. The students I worked with at Middlesex Community College are transferring to four-year institutions, winning top internships and launching graphic design businesses.

Unfortunately, higher education has not been particularly good about telling the story of the success of dual-enrollment and early-college programs. The strength of the research base on early college/dual enrollment has only become greater in the past five years, including important work by Brian An (with Chad Loes) and Julie Edmunds (and her team), which has shown that these programs have a positive impact over time. However, this impact only rarely makes it into the pages of higher education journalism, and college and university leaders have not consistently trumpeted the success either on campus or in public. Perhaps in the next five years, higher education will embrace the narrative of success of early college and dual enrollment and highlight the achievements of its students and alumni.