While many community colleges are dealing with decreasing enrollments, some in Texas have boosted their numbers with students who are still attending local high schools.
And with dual enrollment on the rise in Texas, the state has become more open to making college free for these students.
"The goal is to have 60 percent of Texans having some sort of degree or certification by 2030, and as part of this entire effort to increase the level of education in the state," said Stephen Head, chancellor of the Lone Star College System, a network of two-year colleges around the north side of Houston. "And dual credit is being promoted here in Texas as a way to get students committed to college at an earlier age, when they're [high school] juniors and seniors."
Dual enrollment, also known as concurrent enrollment or dual credit, certainly isn’t new to the state. But Texas community colleges have seen tens of thousands of high school students enrolled in their courses in recent years -- and that number is only growing.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/29/dual-enrollment-rise-texas-community-colleges