Dual enrollment, in which students earn college credit during high school, is shifting the higher education landscape, particularly at community colleges, where dual enrollment students now represent one fifth of enrollees. To facilitate dual enrollment programming, actors from a partner high school and college must navigate decisions for staffing courses, supporting students, and investing resources.
Drawing on organizational theory and data from 81 interviews and site visits at three community colleges and their partner high schools in Texas, this working paper examines how school and college actors navigate boundaries between their organizations and make decisions about resources to support dual enrollment students and courses. Improving the practical and theoretical understanding of how dual enrollment partnerships operate—including how actors from partnering organizations work together to sustain their dual enrollment programming—offers insights for theory regarding how interorganizational fields operate and illuminates practical evidence to support this growing segment of higher education.
The paper finds that legitimizing and supporting the dual enrollment partnership requires some actors to expand or reenvision their roles, while others redefine boundaries between the high school and college. At times, organizational actors must maintain boundaries, preserving rules and practices of the primary organization to comply with policies and protect funding streams. At other times, actors span and redefine organizational boundaries to meet the needs of and further establish the dual enrollment program.