JFF Awarded $15M by U.S. Department of Education to Increase Access to High Quality Dual Enrollment Courses for Young Adults

With funding from the Education and Innovation Research grant program, JFF will expand access to dual enrollment courses for high school students through new community college hubs

BOSTON, Feb. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit driving transformation in the U.S. workforce and education systems, today announced that it has been awarded $15 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education to increase access to high quality dual enrollment courses for high school students. The grant is part of $277 million in funding awarded by the Biden-Harris Administration to advance educational equity and innovation through the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant program.

"Dual enrollment is one of the most powerful tools we have to improve education outcomes, especially for young people from low-income communities who are too often underrepresented in higher education," said Maria Flynn, CEO and President of Jobs for the Future. "Allowing students to accrue college credit in high school while reducing both the time and cost required to earn a college degree is essential to building equitable education-to-career pathways. We're grateful to the U.S. Department of Education for this significant investment."

With this funding, JFF is partnering with state leaders in dual enrollment and education-to-career pathways in Texas, Arizona and Illinois to design and implement a new model of dual enrollment hubs that will be embedded within community colleges and serve multiple high schools. The Increasing Dual Enrollment Access and Success (IDEAS) project will allow these hubs to centralize essential functions like faculty and course availability, and partnership agreements with high schools, while also partnering with high schools to provide students—especially from high-need communities—with robust support, advising, and navigation services.

The hubs will be designed to create efficiencies and economies of scale that will ideally lead to increased and more equitable access to dual enrollment and greater student success.

"Some of the most compelling research indicates that students who participate in dual enrollment programs have a higher likelihood of receiving degrees after high school. They're also more likely to get into four-year colleges," said Joel Vargas, vice president of the Education practice at JFF. "It's time we directly address the persistent challenges in ensuring equal access to dual enrollment programs for young people—an essential focus of the IDEAS project."

About 1.5 million students participate in dual enrollment courses each year, and 34% of all high school graduates have participated, but the data reveals stark inequities. Only about 10% of all public high school students in the U.S. participate in dual enrollment programs and the participation rate for white students is more than twice that for Black students. In addition, about 90% of high schools in rural areas offer dual enrollment compared to 73% of high schools in urban areas—in half of those rural communities, students and their families cover the costs of dual enrollment, limiting access to only students with the means to pay for it.

This is the fifth EIR program grant that JFF has received since 2018, and aligns with JFF's Pathways to Prosperity framework, designed for communities to develop college and career pathways that help young people advance from high school to postsecondary education, and into family-supporting careers.

The IDEAS project specifically responds to the U.S. Department of Education's call to address equity gaps in the nation's current dual enrollment system by focusing on strategies that include equitable student engagement, driving quality, oversight, cross-sector collaboration, as well as reducing costs, and increasing the availability of academic and career-focused courses. JFF will partner with Educate Texas, the Center for the Future of Arizona and Education Systems Center at Northern Illinois University to design the dual enrollment hub model with community colleges in Tucson, AZ, Grayslake, IL, Amarillo and San Antonio, TX.

For more information about JFF's work to accelerate education systems in the U.S. toward equitable economic advancement, please visit the organization's Education practice.

About Jobs for the Future: 
Jobs for the Future (JFF) drives transformation of the U.S. education and workforce systems to achieve equitable economic advancement for all. www.jff.org

SOURCE Jobs for the Future