| Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of 1988, a nationally representative sample of eighth grade students, I assess the effect of dual enrollment—a program that allows high school students to take college courses and earn college credits—on college performance and attainment. I further compare dual enrollment to Advanced Placement. Many policy makers view dual enrollment as a promising way to bridge the transition between high school and college, and advocates have claimed these programs would benefit students from families of low socioeconomic status (SES). The challenge in evaluating the effectiveness of dual enrollment, however, is the non-random participation of students in such programs.;To address these concerns, I employ propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression models to account for social factors that may affect participation rates. I find that earning dual enrollment credit positively impacts several college outcomes. Compared to traditional high school programs, dual enrollment increases college credits earned, decreases the likelihood for remediation, and increases the overall likelihood of attaining a degree; but it does not appear to reduce the time to degree. I further find that dual enrollment similarly benefits low- and high-SES students. I conduct sensitivity analyses and find that these results are robust to reasonably large unobserved confounders that could positively affect both selection to dual enrollment and college outcome.;I find that affluent parents and their children use dual enrollment (and other similar programs) to secure and maintain their educational advantage. Students from high-SES households therefore are better prepared for the rigors of college course work than their low-SES peers. Interestingly, equalizing program participation between low- and high-SES students would minimally reduce SES gaps in college outcomes. A decomposition analysis reveals that SES differences in program participation accounts for a small portion of the SES gap in college outcomes. Even among those who participated in dual enrollment, high-SES students tend to have observed characteristics that favor them in schooling over their low-SES counterparts. Programs would therefore need to provide compensatory access, where low-SES students were participating at greater rates than high-SES students, in order to reduce further SES gaps. |
