The Importance of Dual Credit for Texas Community Colleges

One of the most prolific trends in the past 20 years has been the exponential growth of dual credit students who are earning college-level credits while still attending high school. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) reported that more than 186,000 students were officially enrolled in dual credit courses across all institutions in Texas in fall 2021, with 92% of dual credit students enrolled at Texas public community colleges. With dual credit students comprising an ever-increasing proportion of enrollments at two-year campuses, this blog post seeks to better understand the magnitude of dual credit enrollment at public community colleges nationally and across states in the past two decades.

Dual Credit Enrollment Trends

A formidable challenge when trying to make national comparisons of dual credit enrollment is the lack of a standardized data source. Following the methodology used by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, we used the number of students “under the age of 18” enrolled during the fall semester at community colleges as a proxy for dual credit enrollment (IPEDS Data). We will use the “under 18” designation and “dual credit” students interchangeably in the discussion below.

According to the CCRC’s enrollment dashboard, there were just over 201,000 “under 18” students at community colleges in 1997. By 2021, that number increased more than 400% to 1.05 million dual credit students. For context, the CCRC reports that total enrollment at community colleges nationwide during that time period increased by just 12%. This means that in 2021, nearly 1-out-of-every-5 community college students in America was a dual credit student. 

Texas Leads in Dual Credit Enrollment

As can be seen in the top visualization below, Texas has long been the leader in the number of high school-aged students attending community colleges as dual credit students. From 2001 to 2021, the “under 18” group of students at public community colleges in Texas increased by almost 500% from 29K to 171K. In fall 2021, Texans made up more than 16% of the total number of dual credit students in America, with California second at 11% of the nationwide total. By way of comparison, California had 50,000 fewer “under 18” students (120K) at community colleges than Texas in the 2021 IPEDS data, while New York had just under 56K and Florida had just over 45K total dual credit students enrolled in 2021.

Note: Even though the “under the age of 18” definition excludes students who are actually 18-years-old when they enroll during the fall semester, it provides the most comprehensive proxy to examine trends in dual credit. In the case of Texas, the 171,251 total “under 18” students reported in the IPEDS data differed by only 100 students from the THECB’s published “dual credit” student enrollment of 171,151 at public community colleges in Texas in fall 2021. Additionally, IPEDS only requires submission of age-related data every other year, which explains the gap in data points on the “even” years in the visualizations below.