Dual enrollment is an increasingly popular avenue for high school students to earn college credit. However, low-income students are underrepresented among dual enrollment participants. In this study, we use a difference-in-differences design to evaluate a unique federal pilot program that allowed high school students to access Pell Grants to fund their dual enrollment. Generally, we find a negative effect of the pilot program on dual enrollment participation, with no effect on subsequent college attendance. Our qualitative analysis suggests this initiative did not sufficiently meet students’ specific needs, required strong partnerships with high schools to ensure high school counselors informed students about the program, and involved substantial financial and administrative burden for participating institutions.
AllenD. (2010). Dual enrollment: A comprehensive literature review and bibliography. CUNY Collaborative Programs, Office of Academic Affairs.
2.
AllenD.DadgarM. (2012). Does dual enrollment increase students’ success in college? Evidence from a quasi-experimental analysis of dual enrollment in New York City. New Directions for Higher Education, 158, 11–19.
3.
AnB. P. (2013a). The impact of dual enrollment on college degree attainment: Do low-SES students benefit?Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(1), 57–75.
4.
AnB. P. (2013b). The influence of dual enrollment in academic performance and college readiness: Differences by socioeconomic status. Research in Higher Education, 54(158), 407–432.
5.
AndersonD. M.HoltJ. K. (2017). Research brief: Do high school students know their parents’ income?The Illinois Education Research Council.
6.
AngristJ. D.PischkeJ. S. (2009). Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricist’s companion. Princeton University Press.
7.
BaileyT.KarpM. M. (2003). Promoting college access and success: A review of dual credit and other high school/college transition programs. U.S. Department of Education.
8.
BettingerE. P. (2015). Need-based aid and college persistence: The effects of the Ohio college opportunity grant. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(1), 102S–119S.
9.
BettingerE. P.LongB. T.OreopoulosP.SanbonmatsuL. (2012). The role of application assistance and information in college decisions: Results from the H&R block FAFSA experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(3), 1205–1242. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjs017
10.
CampbellC. A.Deil-AmenR.Rios-AguilarC. (2015). Do financial aid policies unintentionally punish the poor, and what can we do about it?New Directions for Community Colleges, 2015(172), 67–76. https://doi.org/10/gg7m2j
11.
CastlemanB.LongB. T. (2016). Looking beyond enrollment: The causal effect of need-based grants on college access, persistence, and graduation. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(4), 1023–1073.
12.
CohodesS. R.GoodmanJ. S. (2014). Merit aid, college quality, and college completion: Massachusetts’ Adams scholarship as an in-kind subsidy. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 6(4), 251–285.
13.
CreswellJ. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). SAGE.
14.
DaenerP. H. (1994, July24–27). The role of opportunity cost in access to four-year public higher education [Paper presentation]. The Planning Conference of the Society for College and University, San Francisco, CA, United States.
15.
DavidsonJ. C. (2015). The effects of a state need-based access grant on traditional and non-traditional student persistence. Higher Education Policy, 28, 235–257.
16.
DynarskiS. M.HemeltS. W.HymanJ. M. (2013). The missing manual: Using National Student Clearinghouse data to track postsecondary outcomes (No. w19552). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Federal Registrar, U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Notice inviting postsecondary educational institutions to participate in experiments under the Experimental Sites Initiative; federal student financial assistance programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (pp. 67734–67737). https://fsapartners.ed.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/fregisters/FR110315.pdf
19.
GianiM.AlexanderC.ReyesP. (2014). Exploring variation in the impact of dual-credit coursework on postsecondary outcomes: A quasi-experimental analysis of Texas students. The High School Journal, 97(4), 200–218.
20.
Goldrick-RabS.KelchenR.HarrisD.BensonJ. (2016). Reducing income inequality in educational attainment: Experimental evidence on the impact of financial aid on college completion. American Journal of Sociology, 121(6), 1762–1817.
21.
Goodman-BaconA. (2018). Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing (NBER Working Paper No. 25018). https://doi.org/10.3386/w25018
22.
Guzman-AlvarezA.PageL. C. (2021). Disproportionate burden: Estimating the cost of FAFSA verification for public colleges and universities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 43(3), 545–551. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737211001420
23.
HillmanN.WeichmanT. (2016). Education deserts: The continued significance of “place” in the twenty-first century. Voices from the Field, American Council on Education.
24.
KarpM. M.BaileyT. R.HughesK. L.FerminB. J. (2004). State dual enrollment policies: Addressing access and quality. U.S. Department of Education Office of Vocational and Adult Education.
25.
MokherC. G.McLendonM. K. (2009). Uniting secondary and postsecondary education: An event history analysis of state adoption of dual enrollment policies. American Journal of Education, 115(2), 249–277.
26.
MortonJ. (2021). Moving up without losing your way: The ethical costs of upward mobility. Princeton University Press.
27.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Dual enrollment: Participation and characteristics. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019176.pdf
28.
PattonM. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. SAGE.
29.
PernaL. W. (2006) Studying college access and choice A proposed conceptual model. In SmartJ. C. (Eds.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 21). Springer. https://doi.org/1.1007/1-4020-4512-3_3
30.
SaldañaJ. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). SAGE.
31.
SmallM. (2009). “How many cases do I need?”: On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography, 10(1), 5–38.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
