Like many public two-year colleges across the country, Flint Hills Technical College in Emporia, Kansas, has embraced dual enrollment, a program that allows high school students to simultaneously take college-level courses, usually for credit and often without paying tuition.
What sets Flint Hills apart is its preponderance of students in dual enrollment (DE): 83% of the total, according to an analysis by the American Association of Community Colleges of federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Systems (IPEDS) figures for 2022-2023, which also shows that 10 community colleges drew at least 62% of their total enrollment from high school students.
Many higher education advocates worry about the fiscal stability of colleges with high percentages of dual-enrollment students, but the variety of approaches to DE across the country means that at least some of them have a viable path and good reasons for their approaches.
Following state legislation
For Flint Hills, state legislation carved the DE path for career and technical education (CTE) students. Since 2012, the state has provided high school students with state-funded college tuition in approved technical courses and the opportunity to complete industry-recognized credentials in their last two years of high school, says Caron Daugherty, president of Flint Hills.
“The advantages are the opportunities for students in high school to complete a certificate and perhaps begin earning a living and competitive wage in their select industry upon graduation from high school,” she says, noting that the college works with 12 to 15 high schools in its seven-county service area. “The technical programs supported by Excel in CTE [the state legislation] include programs that lead to high-wage, high-demand careers.”
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As in any state that supports secondary students enrolling in college-credit courses, the legislature receives continuous requests to boost funding to sustain the need, Daugherty says.
“Flint Hills Technical College welcomes the opportunity to serve these students,” she says. “We also encourage the state to continue to fund this initiative as it grows and becomes more appealing to Kansas families.”
Retaining challenges
Like many community colleges, Flint Hills has faced challenges in retaining DE students after high school to complete their associate of applied science degree, Daugherty says.
“One of the college’s initiatives in its strategic enrollment management plan is to increase that matriculation number,” she says. “We have hired a student success navigator to … work with that population and help students understand the importance and value of completion.”
A lower conversion rate can create fiscal constraints because state statute prevents technical colleges from levying local taxes; Flint Hills’ primary revenue sources are tuition and state levies, Daugherty says. And those revenue sources need to be at a certain level because technical education is expensive to produce, especially if a college is running programs like dental hygiene or welding technology — which require equipment and gases and carry significant personnel costs to cover everything from a low student-to-faculty ratio, to needing a dentist on staff for the hygiene program.
“We monitor profit-loss statements and focus on those return-on-investment variables to ensure we are providing our students an affordable higher education experience that allows them to accomplish their career goals,” she says.
Given Flint Hills’ 98% placement rate in 2024, she adds, “Students have a low debt, even if they pay out-of-pocket without scholarships or did not take advantage of the Excel in CTE program. We are ever mindful of that balance.”
Daugherty hopes to learn more about how to retain dually enrolled students as undergrads.
“It might be working with industry partners to help them understand the value and importance of degree-level potential, and the wages that might go with that,” she says.
A wide range of factors and influences — navigators, advisors, faculty, administration, high placement ratios, low faculty-to-student ratios, industry outreach and engagement, and cohort models — all work together to support such enrollment and retention initiatives, Daugherty says.
“We celebrate the success of these students and their access to higher education while in high school, as well as their opportunity to minimize their higher education debt,” she says. “In the two-year sector, we all pivot. We are nimble. We adjust and recalibrate. We have high engagement with our communities. The struggles caused by dual credit will continue. Our response and navigation of that model is our strength.”
A 40-year track record
In a similar vein, Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, New York, began a concurrent and DE program about 40 years ago called CollegeNow, which has 86 partner high schools in its region and accounts for more than 71% of the college’s total enrollment, according to IPEDS, although it’s leveled off after a period of growth.
Victoria Zeppelin, director of CollegeNow, says the high percentage of dually enrolled students could be partly an artifact of the decline in overall community college enrollment during the pandemic; she figures that it was probably closer to half of Tompkins Cortland’s enrollment five years ago.
Having said that, “We live in a very rural area without, necessarily, a lot of opportunities to explore college,” she says. “AP is not very big. Many students stay close to home. More than a third of our CollegeNow students report that neither parent has a degree beyond an associate, including a fifth who indicate that they would be the first generation to earn any college degree. Our program is about raising aspirations and helping students see that college is something achievable.”
Tompkins Cortland focuses on balancing the percentage of students participating in dual enrollment with the overall “core” enrollment at the college, and the numbers of matriculated students have increased steadily in recent years, says Robert Palmieri, vice president for enrollment management.
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“We are committed to growing matriculated enrollment, which includes converting a higher percentage of dually enrolled students,” he says. “To accomplish this, we must strengthen our pathways by helping students better understand how their courses fit into degrees and increasing the sense of belonging or connection dual-enrollment students feel with the college.”
About half of new undergraduate students enrolling at Tompkins Cortland each semester — and 80% of those from the three-county service area — have started in the CollegeNow program, according to Zeppelin. She credits the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, which accredits Tompkins Cortland’s DE program, with providing the framework and professional development that support the high-quality practices they have in place.
“We are just trying to keep [students] engaged throughout,” she says. “That’s all a reflection of what they would get if they continue to pursue their degree: that intentional, hands-on approach, [with] quality wraparound services. In a way, it’s almost like a retention. We’re helping them, hopefully, stay through to a degree with us.”
The college’s research shows that students who take at least one concurrent class in high school fare significantly better than the overall student body, with higher retention and graduation rates, Zeppelin says. This is also in line with national research.
Strategies to consider
Zeppelin advises colleagues at other schools to improve retention by helping students identify goals, understand how courses fit into their path, provide services and support when they struggle, and give them a sense of belonging to the institution.
“Try to develop your [DE] program in a developmentally appropriate way, leveraging both high school and college resources and expertise, to guide students and provide those supports along their educational journey,” she says. “Look at incentives for dual-enrollment students, including specific scholarship opportunities,” which could focus on those graduating from high school who have been on free and reduced lunch, for example.
DE should be a key part of an overall enrollment management strategy, and aligning the college’s ED program with institutional research, finance, enrollment and academic leadership will help community colleges find the balance between the benefits of increased access for high school students, and the need to grow enrollment and bolster retention of matriculated students, Palmieri says.
“Work with institutional research and IT to develop reports of former dual-enrolled students who did not attend your college and track them through the National Student Clearinghouse,” he says. “You can then recruit those who never attended another college or never graduated from another college as matriculated students.”
A former high school teacher who has been with Tompkins Cortland for 20 years and previously served as concurrent enrollment coordinator, Zeppelin says it’s helpful that she’s “familiar with the landscape on both sides, trying to understand that liminal space we operate in, and knowing how to put ourselves in [school districts’] shoes, and be proactive and responsive to what they’re dealing with.”
The broader picture
The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) notes that for the 2022-23 academic year, nearly 2.5 million students participated in dual enrollment — about a million more than previously estimated in less thorough counts.
Amy Williams, executive director of NACEP, notes that growth has come about particularly in states that have leaned into DE, such as Iowa, Indiana and Texas.
“This was the only sector in community college enrollment that was growing during the pandemic,” she says. “It got a lot of attention, which potentially has led to interest. Institutions that had a small program worked to build it to scale.”
It’s worked especially well in rural areas, she adds.
Many different approaches
Whether DE leads to fiscal challenges for schools depends significantly on who pays for the courses and what amount, the type of model being instituted, what services are provided, by which entity (the high school, the college or another organization), in what way, and for how long, Williams says.
“Colleges should have focused conversations about the goals for these programs, understand and monitor program costs against the funding they receive, and look at the short- and long-term impact against their goals,” she says.
Institutions need to explicitly define their DE goals and make data-driven program planning decisions, Williams says. This also requires “understanding staffing needs and how that varies based on the model they run, number of students or partner high schools or both, and [how] that all folds into budgeting,” she says. “State policy can have a strong impact on this.”
Funding approaches for dual enrollment are complex, vary by state, and may depend on the program model, course type and location. In some states, the cost falls on students, sometimes at a reduced rate. When students are not paying, supplemental funds from a DE-specific state appropriation or through contractual agreements with school districts at a negotiated rate may offset program costs.
“High schools have an important role to play, too, and they use resources to support and run the program partnership,” she says. “To build a sustainable program, both partners need to understand what they can and can’t contribute, what constrains and timelines they have to function under, their respective capacities, opportunities for efficiencies and resources sharing, division of roles and labor, and their needs, expectations [and] desired outcomes.”
Bottomline, community colleges should have a plan to handle DE growth without stretching resources too thin, or, even more importantly, compromising program quality, Williams says.
“Adding DE can increase demand on advising, faculty and administrative support, which can increase cost,” she says. “At the very least, it is a lot to coordinate. Whether filling otherwise empty seats or adding new partner high schools, colleges should gauge if current staffing levels are adequate to meet this demand — or if additional resources are required to support the expanded scale sustainably. These are their courses, after all.”
