Dual Enrollment Programs Gaining Prominence as Means to Enhance College Prep Options

Dual enrollment represents an effective way to get more students to graduate from high school with a free two-year degree, but what happens after those students enroll in a four-year college remains a murky picture, a leading researcher on dual enrollment programs said.

“We know that they earn credits at a higher rate,” said Dr. Melinda Mechur Karp, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center within Teachers College at Columbia University. “We don’t have good data yet all the way to completion.”

Karp made her remarks during an interview with Diverse that followed a presentation she gave Friday at a panel discussion titled “Increasing College & Career Readiness through Dual Enrollment: Research, Policies & Practices.”

The forum – convened by the American Youth Policy Forum — coincided with what Karp described as a renewed interest in dual enrollment programs, which are programs in which students earn high school credit and credit toward an associate’s degree simultaneously without having to pay college tuition.

The idea is to give students an edge by enabling them to knock out core college work by the time they graduate from high school.

The forum also shined the spotlight on the DeVry University Advantage Academy, or DUAA – a dual enrollment program located on DeVry’s Chicago campus that offers Network System Administration and Web Graphic Design programs.  (Read more.)

Via Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.