Enrollment at Community Colleges Is Stabilizing. The Growing Presence of High-School Students Is Why.

High-school students who are taking college courses for credit helped fuel an increase in community-college enrollment this spring — and brought attention to the outsize role dual-enrollment students have played in the health of the higher-ed sector that’s been most beleaguered by the pandemic.

The number of dual-enrollment students jumped nearly 13 percent from a year earlier, according to preliminary data in the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s most recent spring enrollment report. The subsequent increase in attendance at community colleges was 2.1 percent from a year earlier, the center said.

While the larger trend in enrollment at public two-year colleges has been one of steady decline in recent years, the number of high-school students in dual-enrollment programs has been growing — even before the pandemic began. According to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, nearly one in five community-college students in the fall of 2021 was a high-schooler.

Students who get a head start on acquiring college credits are more likely to go on to earn a college degree, the research shows. But what else do the data say about dual-enrollment programs or the students enrolled in them at community colleges?

The number of dual-enrollment students at community colleges has nearly doubled in a decade.

High-school students have made up an increasingly large share of community-college enrollment in recent years.

In 15 states, high-school students make up more than a quarter of community-college enrollment.

Funding structures for dual-enrollment programs vary widely by state.