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Dual Enrollment: Participation and Characteristics

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The National Center for Education Statistics followed a nationally representative group of students from ninth grade in 2009 and read their high school transcripts. About a third of them took at least one course for college credit. The more useful half of the report is about where and who. Four out of five took the course inside their own high school, and participation tracked closely with how much education their parents had, which is the first sign that access is not evenly spread.

Who published it
NCES, 2019
Authors
Azim Shivji and Sean Wilson
What it is
Data reference
Where the data comes from
National

What it found

  • 34% of students took at least one course for postsecondary credit during high school.
  • 42% of students whose parents held a bachelor’s degree or higher took one, against 26% of students whose parents had not finished high school.
  • 80% took the course at their own high school. 17% took one on a college campus, 8% online, and 6% at a different high school.
  • 26% of students in city schools took a course on a college campus, against 11% of students in rural schools and 11% in suburban schools.

What it does not show

  • The cohort started ninth grade in 2009, so the participation rate here is well below where it sits now.
  • It counts who took courses. It says nothing about whether the credits were useful afterward.

How the study was done

The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, a nationally representative sample of more than 23,000 ninth graders, with transcripts covering fall 2009 through summer 2013.

Why this matters to a family

Most dual enrollment happens inside the high school building rather than on a campus, and that distinction turns out to matter in the research on outcomes.

Sources

Rules change. These were checked September 2026. Confirm the current version with your school before you act on any of it.

About FastTrack Advising

. FastTrack Advising works on dual enrollment and nothing else. We help families choose college courses a high schooler can take now that will still count toward the degree later, we check every course against the transfer rules of the colleges they name, and we stay in the picture through registration so the plan gets used. When the answer for a student is to wait a term, we say that too.

Reading the evidence before a decision?

Save this page and it sits on your own My FastTrack page alongside your state's deadlines and the tools. Deciding which of these findings apply to one teen, in one state, aiming at particular colleges, is what a roadmap engagement settles.

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