One in five community college students is still in high school, the result of a nationwide boom in dual enrollment. 

Now, it’s time for states to move beyond driving up participation and invest in the programs that are most likely to connect high schoolers to college credentials and jobs, researchers from the Community College Research Center said in a brief released this month.

“States must view dual enrollment as more than a mechanism for early college credit accumulation,” the researchers said. Instead, they argued, dual enrollment should be a first step toward success in college — especially for underrepresented students — and toward economic mobility and career opportunity. 

📚 Read more: At one Wisconsin university, nearly half the students are still in high school (via our partner Wisconsin Watch)

However, there’s a critical barrier to progress: Just 10 states provide enough funding for colleges to offer high-quality programs without passing costs on to families, according to the brief. When programs are underfunded, colleges can afford to offer classes but not much else. Without advising and academic support, students may take classes randomly, rather than building toward a credential. 

Meanwhile, dual enrollment is disproportionately benefiting students who are already college-bound, rather than expanding access to Black, Latino, rural, first-generation, and low-income students who are less likely to go to college, the researchers said. States should actively recruit those students into dual-enrollment programs, and provide financial aid to those who need it, they said. 

For practical intelligence on Workforce Pell, delivered weekly to your inbox, sign up for our six-part Workforce Pell Briefing. 

In Texas, students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch can receive scholarships to take dual-enrollment courses. And other states, such as Colorado and Florida, have started building out digital libraries of free course materials to reduce textbook costs. 

📚 Read more: How a boom in East Texas high schoolers taking college classes is transforming Kilgore College (via our partner The Texas Tribune) 

Funding is only part of the puzzle. Wisconsin is trying to further expand dual enrollment, but lacks enough qualified teachers. That’s because colleges there require dual-enrollment teachers to have graduate credits in the subject they teach, even if they already have a master’s degree. The state has funds set aside to reimburse school districts for teachers’ graduate tuition, but hundreds of thousands of dollars go unused every year, according to Natalie Yahr and Miranda Dunlap, our pathways reporters at Wisconsin Watch. 

Many teachers simply aren’t interested in returning to school, even if it’s free. Teachers in Wisconsin don’t make much more teaching advanced courses, and adding the courses doesn’t improve a school’s rating. 

“You’re asking people who are well educated to begin with to go back to school, which takes time and effort, and their reward for that is they get to teach a dual-credit class,” Mark McQuade, an assistant superintendent in the Appleton Area School District, told Natalie and Miranda. 

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From North Carolina: The North Carolina Cooperative Extension has helped farmers solve problems — from choosing the right seeds to fighting diseases that could destroy crops — for more than a century. But now, the federal government is cutting funding for some of its initiatives, leaving the program scrambling for support, writes Brianna Atkinson at our partner WUNC.

From Ohio: Amy Morona at our partner Signal Ohio got records revealing the nuts and bolts of Ohio State University’s third contract with Flock, which manufactures license plate reader cameras. The university will pay $31,500 more each year, or a 20% annual increase from the previous deal. The two-year agreement comes as city leaders across the country debate the use of the cameras. Critics worry the data they capture can aid in federal deportation efforts.

From Texas: Earlier this week, Republican senators in Texas praised universities for how they’re carrying out Senate Bill 37, a law that gives governor-appointed regents greater authority over academics and university governance, reports Jessica Priest at our partner The Texas Tribune. Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton, who authored the law as a senator, was among the invited witnesses at the Higher Education Committee hearing.

In his testimony before the panel — which he used to lead — he told senators that system administrators reviewed more than 14,000 courses, and ultimately fewer than 1% of required changes to comply.

But at a news conference beforehand, professors and students said the law is having a chilling effect, limiting what students are allowed to learn and prompting some to leave their universities.

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