Tuesday, April 9, 2024 - In this episode, Jeff and Michael dive into the complex world of dual enrollment, examining its rapid growth, potential benefits, and emerging challenges. They speak with John Fink, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, to understand the various dual enrollment arrangements, the students they serve, and the outcomes they achieve. The conversation also explores the financial incentives for districts and colleges, the concerns around course quality and rigor, and the implications for high school and college experiences. This episode is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Ascendium Education Group.
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(0:00) - Intro
(4:02) - Dual enrollment programs and their benefits
(12:48) - Dual enrollment sustainability and transferability of credits
(16:51) - Dual enrollment programs and their effectiveness in higher education
(21:44) - Improving dual enrollment programs for underrepresented students
(27:34) - Dual enrollment courses and their impact on college readiness
(33:21) - Dual enrollment courses' rigor and value
(37:50) - Dual enrollment courses and their impact on higher education
Jeff Selingo:
Michael, when I embedded myself in three admissions offices back in 2018, it was the first time that I really heard about the prevalence of dual enrollment courses, which kept showing up over and over again on high school transcripts of applicants, along with AP and IB courses.
Michael Horn:
And you probably didn't have the full scope of just how big dual enrollment has become, Jeff. The most recent national data showed that about 88% of American high schools offer dual enrollment, 88%. And get this, one third of students take these college courses in high school.
So, with dual enrollment a major part of the school day in high schools, and with repercussions further upstream in higher ed, today we're going to take a deep dive on what dual enrollment really is, if it really helps students and how we can ensure quality courses on this episode of Future U.
Sponsor:
This episode is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student success through innovation, data and information, policy and institutional transformation.
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low-income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Jeff Selingo:
I'm Jeff Selingo.
Michael Horn:
And I'm Michael Horn.
Jeff Selingo:
Michael, we've been wanting to do an episode on dual enrollment for a while. I know, for me, it's not only since I was in those three admissions offices, but then last fall in preparation for a talk to community college leaders in Arkansas, I read this working paper from researchers at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College. And you know what? That paper found dual enrollment accounts for nearly one in five community college students nationally.
And so, we've been talking about the decline in community college enrollment during the pandemic. So, the proportion of high school students making up community college enrollment seems to have only grown as a result of dual enrollment.
Michael Horn:
And the ramifications of this shift, Jeff, I am not sure, are fully appreciated frankly, by those in either K-12 or higher ed. And one, of course, is the shifting cost burden of dual enrollment. In many states, the dual enrollment courses are charged a lower tuition rate than those paid for by older post-secondary students. And in that same working paper, Jeff, that you cited from the Community College Research Center, they found that for the typical community college, revenues from the courses cover roughly only 72 to 85% of the costs.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, Michael, I feel like this huge growth in dual enrollment is one of those things that just happened in education when the public wasn't really paying attention. And I get increasingly asked about it when I'm visiting high schools. Just the day before we're taping this, I was speaking to college and career counselors as part of their professional development in Fairfax County Public Schools, that's Fairfax County in Virginia.
And on the way out of that talk, a counselor approached me to ask me what I thought of dual enrollment courses, because they're being pushed by the state, by the county and the parents to do more. And so, today on Future U, we're welcoming John Fink. John is a senior research associate and program lead at the Community College Research Center, and one of the authors of that working paper we just mentioned. John, welcome to Future U.
John Fink:
Thank you.
Michael Horn:
So John, when people talk about dual enrollment, it seems from our perspective anyway, we're actually lumping a lot of different arrangements under the same umbrella. Can you give us a sense for the wide range of arrangements for dual enrollment and all the different variables in play?
John Fink:
Sure. So, I think dual enrollment is an umbrella term. I think at some point somebody said there's like 36 different terms for dual enrollment, but there's a lot of different arrangements. So, the definition is any arrangement where a student, before they complete high school, is taking a course for college credit through a partnership with a post-secondary institution. So, it's not AP or IB, but it can be called dual credit, concurrent enrollment, dual enrollment, early college high schools.
And so, it can vary by the location. Is the course taught at the high school or at the college, or online? It can vary by the instructor. Is it a college instructor or a high school teacher that has the qualifications to teach the course? And it can be very intensive models like early college high schools where students are on a track to complete an associate degree. Or, it can be like my experience where I just took an English 101 course in high school, and that was just my one course that I took.
So, primarily, it is, 80% of dual enrollment, broadly speaking nationally, is at the high school model, primarily with a high school instructor. And then probably the second most common is at the college with a college instructor. But it can be many different arrangements, but it's typically at the high school.
Michael Horn:
And what do we know about who these dual enrollment courses have served historically and who perhaps they're increasingly serving? Can you put some numbers behind the size of these programs?
John Fink:
Sure. Yeah, they've been around for decades, but they've really taken off in the last 10 or 20 years. In the fall of 2021, the most recent year we have data, there was about 1.5 million high school students taking college courses. Most of that's at community colleges, so about 70% of dual enrollment nationally is at community colleges, but a good chunk's at four-year institutions. And they've really grown up as courses for university-bound students on the advanced academic track, but there's been a lot of increased awareness around their potential to be an on-ramp and really serve as a college access strategy.
The other thing I should say is over the years, a lot of researchers have looked at the benefits of these courses and there's really a strong evidence base around benefits of participation in their many different shapes and sizes in terms of high school grades, college enrollment and college degree completion. With really the strongest evidence around the early college high school models where there have been randomized control trials showing how well those serve students after high school.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. So John, can we talk a little bit about the outcomes historically for these programs? What do we know about which types of arrangements do the most for those who will end up in college, so, encouraging that college going, as you were saying, persisting in college and graduation, and really for whom?
John Fink:
Right. And one thing that's tricky is that there is a lot of different ways that these programs are implemented and it's often hard to do a really rigorous evaluation. The best research we have is the randomized trials where students are lottery-ed into an early college high school. And those have shown really strong, like 10, 20 percentage point gains on college enrollment and completion for participants.
But the vast majority of students taking these courses are in more casual or a la carte versions of dual enrollment. And there's been a lot of different correlational designs to show the benefits. It's oftentimes hard to control for unobserved factors like just the students wanting to go to college. But I think as a research community, we're really shifting from not just asking, do these programs work? But, how can we make them work better and for more students and to really broaden the benefits? Because the research we've done also shows that a lot of students are being left out of these courses, Black, Hispanic, Native American, English learners, students with disabilities, men across many of these categories are all underrepresented when we compare to who's in high school.
And there's been research showing that the students who participate from these groups really do benefit, oftentimes benefit more than other students. So, there's real focus on broadening the benefits of these programs.
Jeff Selingo:
And so, there's really no way to track these students even at the state level through a unit record type of thing where we know who took one in high school, where they went to college, how they performed in college. There's really no way to do that right now?
John Fink:
We do have a ways to do it and we have been doing it, and that's our ongoing work now. In 2017, we looked with National Student Clearinghouse data on students who took a dual enrollment course in high school and what happened to them after high school. And as you would expect, these students are enrolling in college at very high rates and they're completing degrees at very high rates. There's some variation across state, but overall these are very strong outcomes, just descriptively.
What we're working on now is more fine-grained analysis, both with Clearinghouse as well as within state datas, where you have strong data systems, like in Texas, that have linked the K-12, the post-secondary and the workforce outcomes, to look to see how many credits, which types of credits, what complementary high school courses. How does that all combine and pay off for students in the long run, both in the post-secondary in terms of degree completion and in the labor market?
Jeff Selingo:
And I guess the payoff we tend to think of, well, if they're going to college and they're graduating, then that's a good thing, but should there be also a payoff for example, that it saves them time? Should that be considered a payoff?
John Fink:
Absolutely. And we do see some descriptive evidence of that, like when we tracked this cohort of students who had some prior dual enrollment and were entering higher education. Just by nature of the data, we were only able to look at them five years after high school. And their five-year degree completion rates look very similar to other students' six-year degree completion rates. So, we do see some suggestive evidence that this is accelerating completion, but it's something we need to look into more.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, there seems to be a lot more questions sometimes than answers on this front.
John Fink:
That's right.
Jeff Selingo:
So, staying on this, I'm curious about the incentives underlying lots of these programs. We know that as states have increasingly pushed dual enrollment, they've introduced funding in a variety of ways. There've been reports that suggest that in some cases community colleges lose money when they enroll students who are still in high school. I'm sure that's not uniform. But then again, perhaps it's a way for them to get students they wouldn't have otherwise enrolled after they graduate from high school.
So, can you talk us through the variability of state arrangements and what are the different financial incentives for both districts and community colleges?
John Fink:
Well, I think, first, thinking about the incentives from the state perspective. This is dual enrollment, it's grown and it continues to grow because this is a very popular and bipartisan issue. This is a way to address affordability, access concerns around higher education. And so, there are dozens of state legislatures, just like in 2019 alone, are taking up bills to expand access to dual enrollment. That a lot of times comes down to how it's funded, if it's free to students or families. That's one of the main barriers. The eligibility requirements and then the availability of qualified instructors. Those are major levers that states can support institutions to expand the programs.
But what we've been focusing on is at the institutional level, there are really interesting incentives and an incentive landscape for community colleges and K-12s and four-years, really to invest in a different way of implementing dual enrollment. One that's more focused on building momentum for college and increasing college access. And like you said, in many states how it's funded, this can be a loss-leader for community colleges.
I said before that the most common type of dual enrollment coursing is at the high school. So, if it's at the high school and a high school instructor is teaching it, this is a pretty cheap course to offer, maybe like 30, 40 bucks a credit, say, just for example. And we've looked at the economics here. But at the same time, colleges are maybe not getting reimbursed at all or getting just a portion of that reimbursement, whether it's at the high school or even at the college. Sometimes based on the funding, they're only getting a portion of that revenue, even if it's offered at a cheaper rate. So, it can be a financial loss for colleges to offer these courses.
And what we've heard from college leaders is as we see now, one in five community college students is a high school student, and at some colleges it's like a third of their students or more are high school. So, if they're not really gaining revenues, they're asking, "How is this financially sustainable to have dual enrollment at such a large share of headcount?"
Jeff Selingo:
I was recently speaking to some principals and counselors in Ohio. You probably saw an audit that came out-
John Fink:
Yeah.
Jeff Selingo:
... in Ohio recently, around dual enrollment. The way they described this, it was a little bit like the wild west. Right? They had students coming onto campus, leaving campus. Athletes love this because it gives them flexibility to take courses. Their AP enrollments are down, but their dual enrollments are up. And there's also these weird incentives because they think colleges are taking essentially their money. Right? There's only so much money in the pie for education in Ohio, and they think this is money that would've gone to K through 12 and now it's going to higher ed.
It seems to me that there is a little bit of a wild west and are we just transferring funds from what would've gone to K through 12 to community colleges in this case?
John Fink:
Yeah, it depends on how it's set up, but that can happen where the funding that was going to teach a student this course, they're taking the college course instead. So, some amount of funding is flowing to the college. Sometimes that's flowing through the K-12s or coming from the states directly.
I think it is like a wild west. There's a lot of different arrangements. Oftentimes, these can be a negotiated between one college and a school district, and a college could be working with dozens of school districts. Some states like Ohio have put guardrails on what those policies can look like, what are the amounts that can be charged per credit, what practices and policies need to be put into place in terms of advising and outreach and recruitment.
But I think what we've been focusing on, what I think is encouraging is that college leaders that get this perspective of the potential of dual enrollment as a college access and equity strategy are ... Yes, there are some additional investments that need to be made around providing advising, doing outreach and recruitment, taking the time to build those partnerships with the high school colleagues.
But there can be large returns in the future because if you look at typical communities, I don't know, depending on where you're looking, we're looking at half of high school graduates not going to any college at all. So, that's not because they can't, it's just because they don't see the purpose or the value. And dual enrollment, we know has this track record of getting students started on a college degree plan to be coming back to the community college after high school. And that's one of those levers, people call it yield, that yield rate of bringing a student back. These students are retained at higher rates, they're passing courses at higher rates, they're completing at higher rates. So, they're good investments.
And the leaders we talk to are really focused. It's not about pulling students away from the universities. We want students to go to universities and get bachelor's degree right away. It's about getting that student who's on the margin of going to any college and getting them started on an exciting college pathway in high school that they can continue at the community college after high school. And that really does balance out that financial issue and is a big incentive for many colleges.
Michael Horn:
John, thinking about that set of questions of getting a student to actually enroll, getting them to perhaps then transfer to a four-year bachelor's at some point. There's a whole host of this that's outside the control of any one community college or high school, namely the transferring of credits to other institutions. That's a challenge throughout higher ed. It's not unique to dual enrollment. But I'm just curious how that plays out in the dual enrollment space specifically and if there are things that policymakers or others should be doing about it?
John Fink:
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in general with the transferability of community college credits to a bachelor's degree for non-dual enrollment students, as there are for current and prior dual enrollment students. There's some things that don't overlap. Like you do see these cases where four-year institutions just as a matter of principal or policy, will not count high school credits earned before high school completion. So, that's its own thing. But those are edge cases, from what I can tell.
Where there's a lot of overlap with community college transfer credits generally with dual enrollment is just in the generic associate degree programs of, get your gen eds out of the way, start taking courses, you'll figure it out later. And then, as students accumulate more credits, maybe they didn't take the right gen eds to get into the major at the four-year, and so they're graduating with many excess credits. And that's the same issue we see in community colleges generally.
So, we've been studying places that do this better. First off, they're creating clearer major align transfer pathways, we call structured transfer pathways, to specific bachelor's degree fields. So, you're taking the right math and the right gen eds. And then they're using that to recruit and get students excited about dual enrollment and this is an affordable route to a bachelor. And then using it to advise and help students build their individualized plan so they know those credits are going to transfer.
So, that's what we're seeing at places that are doing it well. And yes, there's an upfront investment to do that, but this is where we get back to the incentives. We see that there are some real strong returns both in terms of growing the field of college educated folks in communities, but also in terms of creating a future supply of students coming back to college.
Jeff Selingo:
So, let's stay on the incentives for a moment, and let's think about it from the student perspective as opposed to the districts and colleges themselves because this is a question I get all the time that I find fascinating. There's dual enrollment, there's AP, and then there's in some places, IB, International Baccalaureate programs of study. What are the financial incentives from the perspective of the students? Is one better than the other in terms of the work that you've done?
John Fink:
So, I think it really depends on the student and we hope that they have a trusted adult in their high school that's helping them navigate all of this process. And oftentimes the student, they can get a dual enrollment course in math, but they can get the AP in English or poli-sci and they're just taking whatever they can get, what's available.
What we've heard from students though is that the AP, to get the course, it really comes down to the test, to get the credit. And when we look nationally, there's probably twice or maybe three times as many students taking AP courses as there are taking dual enrollment courses. But then there's fewer students who are then taking the test and then even fewer who are receiving a qualifying score on the test. Whereas if you look at dual enrollment, like course pass rates, they're typically around 90% or higher getting the credit for the college course.
So, you hear that from students. They're saying, "Look, the dual enrollment course, I get the credit if I do the work. It doesn't come down to a test." But I think what we hear from institutions is that they're trying to weave all of these together to help students get the best jumpstart on college. And you see really cool examples where colleges are trying to ... They're bringing in the AP and the dual enrollment, maybe some articulated credit, which is prior learning assessment from the high school, and packaging that together as the first step on your college degree. And I think that that's really where the field is moving. It's how do we work with all of these to give students more clarity, build on their purpose and get that jumpstart on a college degree?
Michael Horn:
John, I'm just curious to stay on that stat. You said 90% pass rate on the dual enrollment. A lot lower, say, on an AP exams, right? Is that a good sign or is that something we should be worried about? Does that mean we're passing students who maybe haven't mastered the learning and maybe we should be asking about the rigor of these classes? How do we think about that as good, bad, maybe a mixed bag?
John Fink:
I think we want students to be passing dual enrollment courses. So, we want to broaden these courses, make them available, but then maintain the high quality of college instruction. But the key is to up the supports and provide additional supports in and outside the classroom to get more students in, but to get more students through.
And there's a field of folks working on this. There's an organization that accredits these dual enrollment programs, focusing on the quality and supports, National Alliance for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships or NACEP. So, there's a whole field around ensuring a quality standard for dual enrollment courses. But ultimately, I think we want high dual enrollment pass rates and we want to put more investments in to ensure that they maintain being so high as we broaden who can get into these courses.
Michael Horn:
Let's stay on that question, John, because you've done a lot of thinking about the quality and how to make sure that these are good experiences. What do we know from the research? You've built a framework around this. Walk us through that.
John Fink:
Sure. So, over the past five or seven years, we've been studying in community colleges this guided pathways framework for whole institution student success reform. At the same time, community colleges are seeing so many more high school dual enrollment students. And so, we wanted to see what did it look like when community colleges were extending this guided pathways student success reform to their high school offerings, which traditionally have been this random acts model or programs of privilege, where colleges are offering dual enrollment almost in response to communities that are asking, and it's not very intentional in terms of who's getting access and what they're getting access to.
So, we did some fieldwork. We visited places that had stronger outcomes, community colleges and their K-12 partners, for broadening access to Black and Latino and low-income students that had been implementing these guided pathways reforms. And we learned about this dual enrollment equity pathways framework or DEEP framework that has four key components, like the specialized outreach to communities that are underrepresented, with extra supports to get into dual enrollment. Aligning the dual enrollment course offerings to college degree programs and bachelor's degree in transfer pathways in fields of interest to the communities and students. Providing advising to help students explore their options and build a college degree plan. And then, ensuring that the instructional quality, that these courses were very well taught, but there was a lot of supports to ensure that students who are just taking their first college course, were getting that transition into what it means to be a college student.
So, this is what we've been studying, what it looks like when these programs are implemented well. And just to come back to the incentives piece, that's not the conventional practice to take this DEEP approach, because you're having to dedicate additional staff time, release faculty. But we do see strong incentives to take this approach both in terms of what's right for students and communities, but also what can help build back enrollments for colleges.
And to mention the high school perspective for a while, especially in open choice environments where students and families are voting with their feet and going to different high schools or districts. We hear from high school principals that having a strong dual enrollment program that is free college or that start on a college pathway, but also that's aligned to a degree in a field of interest. That's a real feather in the cap that they love talking about with families and students in their community.
Michael Horn:
So, as you just mentioned, these dual enrollment programs are scaling, they're reaching students who historically haven't had access to them. How do we make sure that the quality or accountability stays high? Right? You mentioned the accrediting association, which is one approach. Should we be looking at outcome-based measures? What's the right way to be thinking about quality control as this grows and grows?
John Fink:
Well, I think we need a lot better data in the space. In terms of metrics for student success, we've gotten there with the post-secondary to some extent nationally, but when you're bridging K-12 and post-secondary data systems, I think there's even more of a need for clearer metrics around let's track access, who's getting access or not? But then, like you said, quality or outcomes, what's happening after high school for these students and what are their college outcomes and what are the metrics that states and colleges and their school district partners can use, yes, for accountability but also for improvement? What are the leading indicators, the KPIs, the metrics that we can be looking at?
And that's really where our work, we're really trying to focus in on that, providing better data and using it to plan improvements around these broad ideas of practice like this dual enrollment equity pathways framework.
Jeff Selingo:
And John, I think I'll just mention on that, that sitting inside admissions offices that were trying to evaluate dual enrollment from all over the place as well as AP and IB, dual enrollment would always fall to the bottom because there was just no sense of the quality of these things. So, I think that's really important.
John Fink:
Yeah.
Jeff Selingo:
John Fink, thank you so much for joining us to really help walk us through, I think, this increasingly big piece of higher education and education in general that a lot of people just don't understand. So, thank you so much.
John Fink:
Thank you both.
Jeff Selingo:
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low-income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. Ascendium believes that system-level change and a student-centric approach are important for our nation's efforts to boost post-secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to remove systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first-generation students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Sponsor:
This episode is being brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today's college students are more than just students. They're workers, parents and caregivers and neighbors, and colleges and universities need to change to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the foundation's efforts to transform institutions to be more student-centered at usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.
Jeff Selingo:
So, welcome back to Future U after that very insightful conversation with John Fink, who walked us through a bevy of research on dual enrollment. And so, Michael, I'm just curious if he changed your mind at all, because I know you came into this interview pretty skeptical of dual enrollment.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, absolutely, Jeff, and obviously listeners have heard that skepticism over this past season, but I think it did change my mind, not fully, but at least in one of my big concerns. And I left not just this conversation with John, but frankly also all the reading and prep we did for this conversation, feeling like this is less a bad deal for students than I had feared up front, Jeff.
And I should clarify, not that I thought it was a bad deal per se, but I thought it might be a misleading one for many, particularly as the practice has expanded beyond serving more affluent students into less affluent ones that are maybe first-gen in college, that maybe don't have the social capital to navigate college and so forth, and understand frankly, the risks in transferring credit and the like.
And I guess I leave feeling like yes, if the high schools are intentional about this process of offering these courses, as John described, and if they follow his framework, then that probably means students are going to be taking gen ed courses and those gen ed courses are going to help them get college credits, and that's going to help them out. And it's okay, in other words, if it doesn't transfer and count for an eventual major because it's going to get them through the gen ed requirements quicker, and that could at least save them money and time. And that's a good thing, I think.
What about you, Jeff? You've also been no stranger to voice your suspicions about dual enrollment. And you mentioned upfront in the conversation that when you saw these courses being evaluated during the reporting for your book, that some college admissions officers looked dimly on them, especially when they compared them to AP or IB courses.
Jeff Selingo:
Yes, it's true that they don't see them in the same light as AP and IB in terms of something that's tied to an established curriculum. Sure, there's unevenness in both AP and IB, but perhaps there's just less of it.
Now, coming off that interview with John, there are two issues and questions with dual enrollment that I still have or that I think warrant further discussion. And for this, I want to zoom in on Ohio to illustrate it. First, I was talking recently with a high school counselor in Ohio who told me that dual enrollment at his school has just taken off in recent years for several reasons. First, they are required to weigh the dual enrollment courses the same as AP. And when everyone is trying to game the GPA system to get a good number for their college application, dual enrollment courses are seen as easier than AP courses.
Second, if they take several dual enrollment courses, which in Ohio are called College Credit Plus, and this is by the way, another issue and how we don't even have a similar name for these nationwide, they can still be eligible for high school sports even if they're not taking a lot of high school courses, for example. And at this school, they don't take dual enrollment courses in the school building. They're either on a college campus, they're online or they're hybrid.
So, it creates a lot of flexibility and freedom for students, he told me, and as a result, some of their AP courses at this high school are on life support because there's just not enough students coming in during the school day to take the regular high school courses. It's, as he described it and as we described with John, it's kind of a wild west. You have some students in school some days, some students out of school other days. And particularly for athletes, it gives them a lot of flexibility to practice and train and so forth.
Third, I asked him, "Okay, so maybe this is all worth it because they're saving on college." And what he told me is that his anecdotal evidence and talking to students who have graduated from that high school and now gone on to college, that yes, they're taking maybe fewer courses within a specific semester. Maybe they're only taking 12 or 15, maybe they're not taking 18, and dual enrollment helped in that way to reduce their course load in any given semester, but they're still going for four years or maybe even four and a half or five years. So, it hasn't reduced the overall length of their program, but maybe it eased up specific semesters.
Finally, what I thought was interesting is if you don't pass the dual enrollment course, you're charged for it. So, now parents are getting these bills and so, often they don't know what they're getting into that their kids are taking all these dual enrollment courses, and they may end up being charged for some of them because they're not passing them.
So, that's the perspective of this Ohio counselor who told me, what was interesting, is that college officials who come to the high schools are now pushing dual enrollment courses because their bosses are telling them. And why is that? Because they want enrollment. And this is the second thing that I wanted to bring up from Ohio because the state auditor recently found that only 16 of the 31 public institutions in the state were turning a profit on these courses when you factored in other things like indirect and as well as direct support costs, such as academic advising, admission support. So, on their surface, these schools might think they're making money and they are, if you just look at the instructional costs. But if you start to wrap in all the other costs that are required because of dual enrollment courses, at least according to this Ohio audit, they're actually losing money on that.
And so just one final thought, Michael, because I know you're interested in the rigor piece of this. When I was talking to the counselor, he had a teacher in the room also and her daughter was taking a dual enrollment course, and this teacher who teaches AP said it couldn't hold a candle to the AP course. And I think that's your point, right? That even if these courses seem to be working and getting more students college credit in high school and getting them to college, you're still worried about their rigor at the end of the day.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, you nailed it, Jeff. And it's interesting hearing you go through that because the first two points from the counselor in Ohio, more flexible schedules, it's a more fluid, right? They have more choice. They can do athletics. That doesn't bother me. And the fact that they can take maybe fewer classes and do better and make sure that they get through college, that explains the mystifying thing that John said where they're graduating at the same length as other students.
So, those don't necessarily strike me as bad things, I guess, but the bigger concern I have is where you just landed. And I worry considerably that these experiences, primarily when they're taught by a high school teacher, I should say, I worry that they don't have the rigor that you would expect in a true college course, or maybe more to the point, that there's a good objective bar to certify learning.
So, John mentioned 90% passage rates, and if you compare that to the AP, they're like, and I'm not sure about this, but I think AP English language and comp, that's like a 56% get a three or above, which I think would be passing, Jeff. Or AP bio, I think is like 64% get a three or above. So, that's considerably lower. And on the one hand, I understand why John would say, "But that's a good thing. We want students succeeding." I totally agree. I want 100% of students succeeding, but I guess I have considerable questions about what succeeding means here from the perspective of are they really learning and mastering the material?
And it reminds me a lot of the online credit recovery conversations that we were having in high schools literally a little over a decade ago. And I still remember a high school educator, and we were in one of these rooms where we were talking about some of these opportunities for innovation, and she turned at me and said, "Ah, now I get it. Online credit recovery, the job to be done," and she's using my language, "isn't about the learning, it's just to make sure that they get the high school diploma." And I get that sentiment in the short term, but man, Jeff, I really worry about the slippery slope to becoming a diploma mill and just awarding credentials without anything behind them. It seems very, very slippery to me.
And in the credit recovery space, as you know, we started seeing students master whole courses with two hours of work. Well, why? Because they just wanted to get the diploma. And I think here, this is a worry, right? As we start to talk about dual enrollment. And it's not me that's going to start to pull away the value of the credential, by the way, it's employers. They're going to ask bigger and bigger questions about the college degree. What does it really signify? They're already asking that. Colleges are also going to ask bigger questions because they already don't believe, given grade inflation, what a lot of the grades and pass rates on report cards actually mean.
So, I think that's my question is, what does a 90% passage rate of a dual enrollment course actually signify? On the one hand, we have research saying more likely to matriculate and graduate, that's comforting. On the other hand, as the practice extends, and if some schools are treating this as profit centers, I really worry about where it goes. And I think you're hearing that, Jeff, in the students who say, "Oh, let's take the easier course." Right? "Let's not take the more rigorous one."
And I guess, last thought on this, and I don't know if you agree here, but I think you could also read in John's point that passage of a course should not come down to just one high stakes test as it does in AP. I totally agree with that. And the AP isn't perfect, right? But on the other hand, I love that there's an objective measurement of mastery that's not from your teacher. And I think that there are other ways to do that for dual enrollment that don't boil down to one test. It could be an assessment of a portfolio of work plus some papers or projects or something, but something objective, please. And I guess that's the bigger thing here, Jeff. It's not so much that I'm annoyed at this. I'm disappointed that we're missing a bigger opportunity to perhaps move to mastery learning, Jeff.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, Michael, a critical point on assessment there and mastery learning, of course. There's two other quick thoughts I have on this. I'm a little concerned about how they're going to count after high school. Dual enrollment courses are sold often as an alternative to AP and IB. And it seems that we may have a whole generation of students and parents, frankly, who are going to be disappointed in what they get from some colleges for these courses. So, I just think this brings up a whole nother issue around credit transfer in higher ed and that many of these courses might not count the way that parents and students expect them.
And so, I think that we just need a lot more transparency about what you're going to get for these dual enrollment courses. And by the way, that should be upfront, especially depending on where you're going to go to college. If I'm going to go to an in-state public or an in-state community college, could you give me some guidance on the private college side too? Because most of these students might be taking these courses before they really decide where they're going to go, and thus, they don't really know how they're going to count.
And Michael, we've talked a lot about the quality of the courses, but not the financing side of these. And community colleges, as we know, are struggling in many states already. Not only are they pushing these courses, as we heard from that counselor in Ohio, to make up for a drop in enrollment of their traditional students, but as we stated earlier, they're not getting the full amount of money for these courses, so it just puts them in a deeper hole.
So, they're getting the enrollment, they're getting the bodies in a seat, but they're not necessarily getting every dollar that they really need. And it seems surprising to me that they're losing money on the students, but yet they want more of them. Right? And so at the end of the day, it reminds me of our conversation earlier this season in Idaho about what is the mission and role of community colleges? Now they just seem to be serving anyone and everyone, including these high school students now for dual enrollment.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And look, this is the confusing part of it all, right? I think maybe some of these community colleges, they see it as lead gen, right? It's a cheaper form of getting students. And of course, as you pointed out, some of them are making money and some of them, let's be honest, maybe they don't even realize that they're losing money, because it's not their faculty actually teaching the class in most cases. And as you've pointed out millions of times, Jeff, right? Most colleges have no idea what a given major even costs them on their side, right? So, they just might not have a firm grasp of some of these numbers.
But I think the other thing is there's real policy pressure behind this right now, and for the public institutions, community colleges, I think they're going to go along with it because it's keeping their overall enrollment numbers afloat. And maybe, Jeff, that's more important than anything else.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, I feel like there is this public pressure, as you're saying, and I heard that from this counselor in Virginia, both from the state, from the school district and from parents. But I feel like we're doing it again. We're building the plane as we fly it. Right? I think we brought up a lot of good questions that maybe we'll continue to talk about this on a future episode, like who teaches these courses and where? This lack of national standards. What we even call them. How they're counted in college.
There's just so many questions, I think, even after this great conversation with John Fink and our take on it, I just feel like if we are going to push this at the state level or at the district level, it seems like we need to have a larger and longer discussion on what is the goal, what is the ultimate goal here for students? Is it about saving money in college? Is it about finishing college early? Which clearly they're not. Is it about giving them more flexibility and more optionality in high school? Which I like. You don't seem that bothered by students coming and going out of high school. I think that high school, there is a community. It's a little bit different than a college campus. I think that there is a community in high school, and that was one of the things we were missing during COVID when students were learning from home.
So, the way this counselor in Ohio described it to me, some days this many students would be in high school. The next day, maybe a quarter of that amount would be out, right?
Michael Horn:
Well, Jeff, just stay on that for a second. On the one hand, I think high school would be more interesting if it's more fluid, and I get the downside. On the other hand, think about chronic absenteeism and trying to figure out who's legitimately absent, right? No wonder they're having trouble if half the students maybe aren't even supposed to be there, how would you know? I think that's part of your point too.
Jeff Selingo:
And I think it's also, they have a curriculum that they want to serve up, and if students aren't there to take advantage of it, how do they plan for that curriculum from year to year?
Michael, I'm so glad that we finally did this episode, and that's all we have time for today on Future U. Again, continue to follow us on various social channels as well as my newsletter and Michael's newsletter, sign up for it to hear more about Future U. Please rate us wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as subscribe to us and make comments there. And we will see you next time on Future U.
