Oregon Study Shows Concurrent Enrollment Prepares Students for Subsequent College Coursework

Oregon, one of several states modeling their concurrent enrollment programs on NACEP standards, recently released the results of the first large-scale, independent statewide evaluation to examine the effectiveness of the NACEP model of concurrent enrollment – college courses taught in a high school, by a high school teacher that carry both high school and college credit. The research report, Dual Credit in Oregon—2010 Follow-up overwhelmingly affirms the value of concurrent enrollment as measured by subsequent student performance in college.

Commissioned by Oregon’s legislature and conducted by the Office of Institutional Research of the Oregon University System, the study examined the college participation and performance of 15,707 students attending an Oregon college or university whose college transcripts recorded their having taken a concurrent enrollment course while in high school.

The study followed the progress of students in sequenced courses in writing, mathematics, and Spanish “where success in the final course of the sequence can be presumed to depend on knowledge gained in the prerequisite.” Concurrent enrollment students who took the prerequisite course in the sequence in high school and the next course in college are compared to their counterparts who took both courses after matriculating to an Oregon college or university.

The authors conclude that concurrent enrollment students “pass the final course in proportions that are substantially equivalent to those of their college-prepared classmates” and cite additional findings from the study as evidence that concurrent enrollment prepares students for college success. For example, Oregon’s concurrent enrollment students:
• have a higher college participation rate than high school graduates overall;
• continue to the second year of college at a higher rate than freshmen who enter college without having previously earned college credit;
• earn a higher first year GPA among freshmen who continue to the second year of college;
• accumulate more credit by the end of their second year of college.

For the results on persistence to the second year of college, the authors controlled for academic strength (as measured by GPA, SAT scores, and receiving Advanced Placement credit) and student demographics, finding that “the odds that dual credit students would be predicted to persist to the second year of college are increased by 17% compared to students who did not take dual credit.”

Two earlier studies from the US DOE (“The Toolbox” and “The Toolbox Revisited”) link the momentum gained by students who are exposed to challenging coursework and who earn college credit while still in high school to higher college completion rates.

Summaries of recent research on dual and concurrent enrollment are available on the NACEP website.