A feature by Miami’s NBC affiliate highlights the popularity of dual enrollment programs. The piece notes Florida International University has partnered with the Miami-Dade school district to offer more college-credit courses to its students.
One note at the end jumps out:
FIU said it’s worth the $17 million the university has invested in the program. Many of the students end up enrolling at FIU, and arrive on campus ready to hit the ground running.
Similar logic drives some of the state’s community colleges to offer dual enrollment courses to private-school students, free of charge. The hope is that by helping students take college courses for free, they can draw academically high-performing high schoolers to enroll at their institutions after they graduate.
For two years, however, dual enrollment courses haven’t been free for all private school students, due to a change in the way the state funds them. A change requiring school districts to pick up more of the costs inadvertently created a dilemma for some private schools: Pay new charges for their students, or steer them away from college credits.
Some colleges in the state never passed new fees on to private schools, in part because they saw duel enrollment as a recruitment tool.
For the past two years, lawmakers have floated different proposals that would ensure dual enrollment courses are available to private-school students everywhere for free. The measure proposed earlier this year would have created a system in which dual enrollment was available to all students, as a kind of “loss leader” that could attract students to colleges while letting them knock out some credits ahead of time. Since it never passed, it’s not clear what the solution may be.
