Dual Credit Pays Off: Assessing Dallas-Area Dual Credit Students from Education to Workforce
Sayeeda Jamilah
Insight Brief - Published May 2024
Longstanding research on dual credit substantiates that participation yields immediate benefits, such as high school achievement and college preparedness, and longer-term benefits, such as an increased likelihood of enrolling in college and completing a degree. However, research does not extensively examine the relationship between dual credit participation and more distal outcomes such as earnings and living wage attainment. To address this knowledge gap within the context of the Dallas College service region, the Research Institute conducted a historical study with the 2011 high school graduating class from 22 area ISDs to observe how dual credit influenced their educational and financial trajectories up to ten years after high school graduation. The foundational questions addressed in the study were a) if the benefits of dual credit persisted from postsecondary to longer-term wage outcomes, and b) if these benefits were equitable across student groups. A sample of 20,858 graduates were studied using person-level administrative data from the Texas Education Research Center through quasi-experimental statistical methods. Housed at the University of Texas at Dallas, the Texas ERC holds longitudinal student- and person-level records from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), and Texas Workforce Commission (TWC).
This brief highlights key findings of the Research Institute’s longitudinal study of educational and financial outcomes of dual credit students in Dallas College’s service region. This resource is intended to help inform strategic decision-making of institutional leadership (at Dallas College and other institutions) and to set the stage for future analyses (e.g., to gauge the effects of Texas House Bills 505 and 8 on dual credit enrollment and its contributions to performance funding). A working paper with more detailed findings is available here: Do Dual Enrollment Students Realize Better Long-Run Earnings? Variations in Financial Outcomes Among Key Student Groups , with a state-level analysis forthcoming.