Costs, Quality on Radar as Dual Enrollment Rises (EdWeek.org - June 3, 2014) As dual-enrollment programs surge in popularity, policymakers and advocates are wrestling with how to pay the costs and promote access for all high school students who are eligible to earn college credit, especially low-income and minority populations. . . . About 82 percent of U.S. public high schools reported that students were enrolled in a dual-credit course in 2010-11, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That adds up to about 1.4 million students taking 2 million courses, compared with just 800,000 students enrolled in such programs in 2002-03, the NCES data show. Dual-enrollment programs vary in form, but students typically can participate by taking the courses in high school classrooms, on college campuses, or online. The courses span many disciplines, including college algebra, principles of economics, U.S. history, and introduction to sociology, to name a few. In the career-technical area, high school students tend to gravitate toward the health sciences, information technology, and business courses, educators say. Its often an affordable way to get a jump-start on college. Still, there are expenses and someone must pick up the tab. Sometimes courses are free to students, or discounted to as low as $75 per class, while others can cost them as much as $400. Most frequently, the cost of dual enrollment is absorbed by postsecondary institutions, followed by parents and students, high schools and school districts, and the state, the NCES reports. . . . A growing body of research about the effectiveness of dual enrollment is helping to make the case. For example, students who took such courses were 10 percent more likely to complete a bachelors degree than a comparison group of entering college freshmen, according to a study published in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis in 2013. The edge was even greater—12 percent—for students whose parents never attended college.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:35:01 +0000
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