Socioeconomically disadvantaged high school students are more likely to fail their dual-enrollment, college-level courses regardless of their level of prior academic achievement, with such failures leading to substantial reductions in college enrollment, a new study suggests.
However, students who attempt dual-enrollment courses and fail are still more likely to enroll in college than comparable students who never enroll in such dual courses at all, says a study by researchers at the nonpartisan research organization WestEd, which is among the first to examine failure rates in dual enrollment.
“The [student] who takes dual enrollment and passes has a higher likelihood of going to college,” said Jenna Howard Terrell, one of four authors of the WestEd working paper, “Course Failure in Dual Enrollment and the Impact on College-Going.” “But surprisingly, the student who takes dual enrollment and fails is still going to attend college at a higher rate than the one who never takes dual enrollment at all.”
Terrell said a major implication of the study is that K-12 educators should not “gatekeep or scare kids away from dual enrollment based on these findings.”
An ‘important tension’ about potential failure
Dual-enrollment offerings and enrollment have grown steadily in recent years. The setup allows high school students to take college-level coursework—either at a local college or on site at their high school through a teacher authorized by the partner college—and earn college credit.
Some 2.8 million U.S. high school students participated in a dual-enrollment course through a community college or other postsecondary institution during the 2023-24 school year, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. That figure represented a 12.7% increase over the previous academic year.
But other research has shown that students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities are underrepresented in dual enrollment, despite the potential benefits.
“A large body of research shows that participation in [dual enrollment] is associated with higher rates of college enrollment and persistence, leading to widespread policy efforts to increase access, particularly for students who have historically been underrepresented in advanced coursework,” says the WestEd paper.
“These expansion efforts, however, have surfaced an important tension,” the paper says. “As participation expands, so too does concern about course failure and its potential consequences.”
The paper draws on data from California, which passed a law in 2016 expanding dual-enrollment opportunities, especially for students who are disproportionately low-income, students of color, and those who are first-generation college-going.
The researchers examined data gathered by the California Department of Education covering students who entered 9th grade in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19, a sample involving some 1.74 million students.
Overall, 17.1% of students who enrolled in at least one dual-enrollment course during the study period received a failing grade in at least one course. Students who failed were more likely to be male, Hispanic, and socioeconomically disadvantaged, and they tended to have lower prior academic achievement on average than students who passed all their dual-enrollment courses, the paper says.
The WestEd researchers found what they termed a “preparation paradox,” meaning that socioeconomically disadvantaged students were more likely to fail dual-enrollment courses regardless of their prior levels of academic achievement. This gap widened among higher-achieving students, which suggests that differences in prior academic preparation cannot fully explain the observed disparities in failure rates.
“What we find is this very persistent gap in dual-enrollment success for students based on their socioeconomic status,” said Joanna R. Mathias, another WestEd researcher and co-author of the study. “So, even students who are doing really, really well prior to dual enrollment, if they are socioeconomically disadvantaged, there is a pretty significant gap in their likelihood of passing a course” compared with peers who have the same level of achievement, she said.
As the paper puts it, “This is not a story about underprepared students struggling with college-level work. It is a story about prepared students encountering non-academic barriers that preparation alone cannot overcome.”
Those barriers include access to information about eligibility, scheduling of courses, financial resources for students, and institutional support such as transportation to classes held on college campuses, the paper says.
“Support infrastructure such as proactive advising, financial navigation, academic integration, not stricter eligibility thresholds, are a more appropriate response to this pattern,” the paper says.
A central conclusion of the paper is that expanding access to dual-enrollment courses is recommended even if policymakers know that some students will fail.
“What we find is that the experience of being in dual enrollment, even if a student doesn’t do well, seems to be beneficial,” Mathias said. “And that failing doesn’t have any significant negative impact on them. It looks like it’s better for students to attempt to try and participate in … college-level coursework to get some exposure to college experiences and things like that. That’s more important than just the impact of failing a course.”
Study sheds light on an ‘important question’
Jason L. Taylor, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Utah, who has studied dual enrollment, said he was concerned about the 17% failure rate for dual enrollment among California students.
“That’s nearly 1 in 5 students, which is really alarming,” he said.
As dual enrollment has expanded in recent years, there has been limited research examining failure rates, so the WestEd study is important, Taylor said.
“This is one of the first and biggest studies that empirically answers a really important question” about those failure rates, he said. “As dual enrollment has grown, access has expanded and we know some students aren’t successful but we don’t really know [why]. It’s really important to understand this.”
Taylor said the paper’s finding that there is still a benefit to dual enrollment even for students who have failed a course was significant.
“To me, that says … it’s worth some risk for students to try postsecondary coursework in high school, and it still pays off in terms of helping their momentum and transition into college relative to not taking dual enrollment at all,” he said.
