Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Dual enrollment programs, which offer students the opportunity to earn college credits while in high school, are designed to provide exposure to college-level work, thereby increasing postsecondary college enrollment and success. Research demonstrates that one of the most important predictors of college enrollment is a strong college-going climate in high school (Roderick, 2008), and once students are enrolled, their early college success is a strong predictor of ultimate degree completion (Adelman, 2006). The Early College Initiative (ECI) at the City University of New York (CUNY) is a dual enrollment program that produces a particularly immersive college-going culture within high schools through partnerships with specific colleges, creating a collaborative relationship that helps to bridge the high school-college divide. Making use of longitudinal data from multiple data sources, including CUNY’s Administrative Data Warehouse, National Student Clearinghouse, and NYC Department of Education, we examine the predictive impact of students’ individual- and school-level characteristics on timely college matriculation. Our sample consists of more than 6,800 students who enrolled in an ECI high school over the course of a decade (2006-2017). A binary logistic regression demonstrates that demographic factors such as race, gender, and socio-economic status, while important, may be less predictive when accounting for academic and behavioral factors. Notably, black, white, and Latina women are consistently more likely than men to enroll in postsecondary education (NCES, 2016), but when accounting for early college GPA, early college course withdrawals, and other academic factors, gender is not a significant predictor of college enrollment in the ECI context. We discuss these and other results, exploring how our work can contribute to the dual enrollment literature, while also providing insights for practitioners, both at the program and school level.