{"id":59726,"date":"2025-12-03T15:30:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59726\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T15:30:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:30:18","slug":"high-school-and-college-at-the-same-time-dual-enrollment-surges-in-ny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59726\/","title":{"rendered":"High school and college at the same time: Dual enrollment surges in NY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter<\/a> to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Every morning, all of the roughly 100 seniors at Kingsborough Early College Secondary school start their day taking classes together at CUNY Kingsborough Community College. <\/p>\n

In the afternoon, they hop on a yellow school bus and head back to their school on the Lafayette educational campus about 15 minutes away. <\/p>\n

Kingsborough juniors make the reverse trek. They start their morning at the Lafayette campus then take the bus to the community college for afternoon classes. <\/p>\n

By the time the students graduate high school, most have earned associate degrees from CUNY Kingsborough. In fact, the majority \u2014 57% \u2014 of CUNY Kingsborough students are not stereotypical college students. They\u2019re high schoolers, according to a new analysis released Tuesday<\/a> from a New York coalition of advocates and education institutions. <\/p>\n

CUNY Kingsborough is one of six community colleges across the state where high schoolers make up the majority of students. It could be the harbinger of something bigger. As community college enrollment has declined nationwide in recent years, <\/a>dual enrollment programs \u2014 where high school students take college courses and earn college-level credit \u2014 are expanding in New York state and elsewhere. <\/p>\n

The state Education Department is making these programs a priority. It recently proposed new reporting regulations<\/a> requiring institutions to not only report their dual enrollment partnership agreements but also to provide data on enrollment and outcomes. The idea is to help officials and educators get a better grasp on the variety of dual enrollment programs and find ways to ensure the programs reach more students who are underrepresented in higher education.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high: According to a 2024 report from Georgetown University\u2019s Center on Education and the Workforce<\/a>, workers will need a bachelor\u2019s degree for 66% of \u201cgood jobs\u201d in 2031 \u2014 defined as one that pays a minimum of $43,000 a year nationally to workers ages 25-44. <\/p>\n

The state\u2019s proposed rules, which it\u2019s expected to adopt early next year, will mark the state\u2019s first consistent policy governing these programs. Additionally, the state recently created a $9.1 million College in High School Opportunity Fund <\/a>to support dual enrollment and other early college programs to focus on enrolling more students from low-income families. <\/p>\n

Several studies have celebrated dual enrollment programs for helping put students on a path to college by exposing them to high-level coursework. <\/p>\n

At Kingsborough, the program has proven so successful that many of its students not only complete higher education degrees, they eventually return to work at the school. Of the school\u2019s 80 staffers, 16 are graduates, its principal, Tracee Murren, said. <\/p>\n

And there\u2019s one other very obvious benefit dual enrollment programs frequently offer: Students can save money by earning college credits, often for free, before they finish high school. <\/p>\n

Early college programs help families save on average $13,000 on the cost of a bachelor\u2019s degree, said Alexandra Wilcox, deputy director of the New York Alliance for Early College Pathways<\/a>, the group that studied the state\u2019s dual enrollment expansion. <\/p>\n

Research has found students in these programs are also more likely to attend school regularly, avoid suspension<\/a>, graduate high school<\/a>, and earn a college degree<\/a> within six years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is a game changer in terms of being able to save time and money to a degree,\u201d Wilcox said.<\/p>\n

But a deeper understanding of the types of programs, who they\u2019re serving, and what their outcomes are \u2014 the things the state is proposing to capture \u2014 will ultimately strengthen dual enrollment programs, said Wilcox.<\/p>\n

Though New York pioneered dual enrollment programs, launching them more than 50 years ago, the state\u2019s approach in terms of policy and funding has been \u201cinconsistent and unpredictable,\u201d Wilcox said. \u201d<\/p>\n

NYC has range of early college programs<\/p>\n

Across New York state, dual enrollment jumped 15% year-over-year, the alliance report found. It now has the nation\u2019s third largest number of students in dual enrollment with more than 176,000, behind California and Texas. <\/p>\n

In New York City, the majority of dual enrollment students are in College Now<\/a>, where they take college-level courses at CUNY for free, generally as an add-on to their regular high school courses. But there\u2019s rising interest in the early college approach, which integrates college courses more deeply into the curriculum. About 30,000 students take College Now courses while roughly 3,500 students take CUNY classes through early college courses, a CUNY spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Nearly 45 out of the city\u2019s 400 high schools offer early college programs, according to the city\u2019s MySchools lookup tool. <\/p>\n

The early college model traces its roots to Middle College High School<\/a>, which opened in 1974 to provide students who struggled in traditional schools with an opportunity to take courses at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where the school is still located. <\/p>\n

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Some early college programs do not screen students based on their academic records, like Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. That school launched in Brooklyn in 2011 and spawned eight other high schools<\/a> across the boroughs that offer a six-year program, grades 9-14, each affiliated with different CUNY institutions. Students at these schools can graduate with an associate degree in a STEM field at no cost. <\/p>\n

Other programs are highly selective. Bard College, a liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, has four New York City Bard Early College<\/a> campuses, where Bard professors teach students, who go through a rigorous admissions process involving a test and interview. The newly opened HBCU Early College Prep in Queens <\/a>\u2014 which partners with Delaware State University, a historically Black institution \u2014 also admits students based on GPAs, a writing exercise, and a video submission. The HBCU Early College students take online classes through Delaware State.<\/p>\n

Access to dual enrollment programs shifts<\/p>\n

At Kingsborough Early College<\/a>, which opened in 2006, the school targets students who are underserved in higher education \u2014 those \u201cnot typically selected for gifted and talented,\u201d Murren said. <\/p>\n

The school starts in sixth grade, admitting students through a lottery. Demand for it is high: Roughly 1,000 students apply for 100 seats every year. <\/p>\n

Roughly 40 to 50% enter the program reading below grade level, Murren said, and the school takes an intensive approach to ensure they\u2019re ready to read dense college-level material as they reach the upper grades. Middle schoolers also have an advisory class every day to ensure they have the \u201cmental fortitude\u201d to take on college-level work, she said. <\/p>\n

\"\"Students at HBCU Early College Prep High School in Queens on its first day of school, Sept. 4, 2025. (Michael Appleton \/ Mayoral Photography Office) <\/p>\n

The students take their first college class in ninth grade, a Spanish course, stretching it from one semester to the entire year to make it slower and more digestible, Murren said. The school intentionally starts with a foreign language since it\u2019s a course that many four-year colleges require and has no prerequisites.<\/p>\n

Professors from CUNY Kingsborough Community College come to the Lafayette campus to teach the freshman and sophomores in the afternoon, and the school has an extended day to accommodate these courses. <\/p>\n

Balancing high school and the more advanced college courses simultaneously isn\u2019t easy, Murren acknowledged. But her staff is committed. There\u2019s low teacher turnover, and they get to know most students from the age of 10. <\/p>\n

The students, for the most part, take their college classes together once they start attending the CUNY campus, maintaining a sense of community. <\/p>\n

Murren said the students also support each other, characterizing their approach in this way: \u201c\u2018We\u2019ve been going through this together, and I don\u2019t want you to fall off, so I\u2019m going to make sure that you don\u2019t.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWe should never doubt what our students are capable of, their abilities, and their tenacity really shines through when given the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, many high schools have used dual enrollment programs as an acceleration strategy instead of also a strategy to promote college access, said John Fink, a researcher at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s changing. Research into dual enrollment is also shifting away from addressing whether it works and instead trying to understand how to make it work better \u2014 and for more students, not just the top students who are \u201calready acing everything,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The key question, Fink believes, is how to make sure that families know there\u2019s free college available to New York City high schoolers. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven though you think that word would get out, it doesn\u2019t,\u201d he said, \u201c[but] when it\u2019s implemented as a purposeful path to debt-free college \u2026 that marketing also helps sell the high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat New York\u2019s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC\u2019s public schools delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32123,13533,32122,9,56,63,65,64,122],"class_list":["post-59726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-early-college","tag-first-day-of-school","tag-historically-black-colleges-universities-hbcu-early-college-prep-high-school","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-queens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}