Allowing high school students to earn both college and high school credit at the same time has gone from boutique to baseline. These dual enrollment programs blend the last years of high school with the first year of college, often in classes taught on high school campuses. They increasingly link coursework to career pathways that lead to good jobs. They are also an underrated form of K–12 public school choice.

Done well, dual enrollment gives students a first taste of college-level expectations, lowers the cost of a credential, and accelerates the path to a good first job. Done poorly, it devolves into random acts of dual credit, with scattered classes that don’t apply to a pathway, credits that don’t transfer, and equity gaps that widen instead of close.

At least 48 states and the District of Columbia operate dual-enrollment programs. The field’s vocabulary is messy: dual enrollment, dual credit, college in high school, early college, and concurrent enrollment are often used interchangeably. But some organizations distinguish these terms. The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, for instance, treats concurrent enrollment as a specific dual enrollment model that focuses on college courses being taught in high schools by college-approved teachers.

States add further nuance. A recent College in High School Alliance review catalogues how states use success indicators in accountability systems. Forty-two include at least one measure, but reporting ranges from simple participation counts to detailed results broken down by race and ethnicity.

For federal data collection, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) defines dual enrollment programs as those in which high school students enroll in a college course for credit, earn a passing grade, and have that grade recorded on an official college transcript. By that standard, credit-by-exam programs such as Advnced Placement or International Baccalaureate don’t count, since students are not enrolled in a college course for credit.

The NCES definition excludes other features that some definitions of dual enrollment include, such as who teaches the class (high school or college faculty), whether it also counts for high school credit, and where courses are taught (campus, high school, or online). For NCES, what matters is the grade on a college transcript.

Dual enrollment participation has surged, according to NCES data. In 2022–23, nearly 2.5 million high school students took at least one college course. In 2023–24, the total rose to 2.8 million—a 12.7% jump, approaching one in three high school students. Roughly 90% of high schools now offer dual-enrollment options, though state-to-state variation is significant. In Idaho and Indiana, for example, more than half of the students in community-college rosters are still in high school, taking courses on campus, in their schools, or online.

Community colleges are the backbone of this growth, enrolling 71% of dual-enrollment students. Roughly 20% of today’s community‑college students are high schoolers, redefining who counts as a college student. This close connection makes community colleges the central bridge between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce, helping students move more quickly toward degrees and good jobs.

Taken together, these trends make dual enrollment an undervalued but expanding form of K–12 public school choice, or course choice. For many students, the last years of high school have effectively become the first year of college. The traditional line dividing the two is blurring. As a Jobs for the Future report puts it, this is “the big blur,” an emerging system that erases the old boundaries between high school, college, and careers and replaces them with a more seamless pathway from learning to work.

A robust body of research associates dual enrollment with higher rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, credit accumulation, persistence, and completion, especially when offerings are coherent and provide students with personal support. Passing a real college course can be transformative for first-generation and underrepresented students who need early proof that they are “college-capable.”