Bridging College and Careers: Using Dual Enrollment to Enhance Career and Technical Education Pathways

Bridging College and Careers: Using Dual Enrollment to Enhance Career and Technical Education Pathways

Using longitudinal administrative data, this NCPR working paper compares outcomes of students who in 2008–09 and 2009–10 enrolled in one or more dual enrollment courses through the Concurrent Courses Initiative (CCI) in California with those of similar students in the same school districts who did not participate in the initiative.

Using regression models that control for student characteristics and other factors, the authors find that relative to comparison students, dual enrollment students had similar GPAs but higher graduation rates in high school. Dual enrollment students entered college at similar rates to the comparison group but entered four-year institutions and persisted in college at higher rates.

Notably, dual enrollment students accumulated more college credits than did students in the comparison group, and this difference in credit accumulation grew over time.

This NCPR working paper is the companion technical report to the overview report Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment.