State Findings: Dual Enrollment Student Outcomes

By Daniel March, John Fink & Tatiana Velasco

In October 2024 CCRC released the report The Postsecondary Outcomes of High School Dual Enrollment Students: A National and State-by-State Analysis, finding higher rates of college-going and completion for dual enrollment students than students who don’t participate in dual enrollment. The report also finds that dual enrollment students’ outcomes vary greatly across and within states, with persistent gaps in access and success for low-income, Black, and Hispanic students.

The accompanying data dashboard below displays state-by-state results from the 2024 report, broken down by student racial/ethnic group, neighborhood income, and gender. The data allow states to assess how well their dual enrollment programs are helping students gain a head start on college compared to other states and the nation overall.

Data Definitions

Dual enrollment (DE) students: High school students enrolled at a postsecondary institution for the first time ever in fall 2015. We follow NSC’s definition and flag a student as a dual enrollee when their high school diploma date is after their start date at the postsecondary institution. If high school diploma information is not available, DE status is based on the student’s age at the start date of the term; that is, if the student is younger than 17.7 at the start of the fall 2015 enrollment, they are considered a dual enrollee. Among first-time entrants at a postsecondary institution in the fall of 2015, 457,922 were DE high school students. Most of our analyses focus on DE students who in fall 2015 were in 11th or 12th grade (representing 88% of all DE students).

Non-dual-enrollment (non-DE) students: Students who were new undergraduates in fall 2015 but not in high school who entered postsecondary education recently after high school graduation—at ages 18–20, without any prior dual enrollment records.

Expected high school graduation date: The available NSC data do not provide an exact measure of high school completion for the majority of students. Therefore, to identify when the student would be expected to have completed high school and attend college we derive an expected high school completion date based on student age (e.g., DE students age 16.7 to 17.7 in fall 2015 were in 12th grade with an expected HS graduation of spring 2016).

Enrollment Outcomes in Students' First Year after High School

Enrolled at Any College: DE student enrolled at any postsecondary institution during the first year post-high school.

Enrolled at Community College: DE student enrolled at a community college during the first year post-high school.

Enrolled at Four-Year Institution: DE student enrolled at a four-year institution during the first year post-high school.

Re-Enrolled at DE College: DE student returned to the DE institution for at least 1 term during the first year post-high school.

Completion Outcomes within Four Years after High School

Any College Completion: DE student completed any postsecondary award within four years post-high school.

Completed Bachelor’s Degree: DE student completed a bachelor's degree within four years post-high school.

Completed Associates, No Bachelor’s: DE student's highest award completed within four years post-high school was an associate degree.

Only Completed Certificate: DE student's highest award completed within four years post-high school was a postsecondary certificate.

Racial/Ethnic Representation in Dual Enrollment (State Overview Tab)

To show racial/ethnic representation in dual enrollment compared to high school enrollment, we use data from the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection from the 2015-16 school year.

The development of this dashboard was supported by Strada Education Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305B200017 to Teachers College, Columbia University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

This report and accompanying dashboard update data from a 2017 report, What Happens to Students Who Take Community College "Dual Enrollment" Courses in High School?, by John Fink, Davis Jenkins & Takeshi Yanagiura.