2012 Reports

Dual Enrollment for College Completion: Findings from Tennessee and Peer States

Karp, Melinda Jane Mechur; Hughes, Katherine Lee; Cormier, Maria Scott

In early 2012, a consortium of stakeholders, including the Committee for Economic Development, the Kresge Foundation, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Tennessee Business Roundtable, the Tennessee College Access and Success Network, and the Tennessee State Board of Education, commissioned the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct a study of dual enrollment in Tennessee and a sample of peer states. Motivated by Tennessee’s college completion agenda and a belief that helping high school students gain access to college coursework can set them on a path to postsecondary credential completion, the Chamber aimed to (1) develop an understanding of the potential benefits to dual enrollment, (2) gain information about and generate lessons from peer states’ dual enrollment experiences, and (3) present possible modifications to Tennessee’s current dual enrollment policies. This report presents finding from the first phase of the study, an examination of dual enrollment research and peer state policies. In Tennessee, dual enrollment refers to an arrangement in which high school students enroll in college courses and earn college credit that is recorded on a regular college transcript. Dual credit refers to an arrangement in which high school courses are aligned or articulated with college courses at a specific postsecondary institution; students who successfully complete the high school version and enroll in the partnering college may subsequently be granted college credit. In this report, we refer to both arrangements by the more general term, dual enrollment.