Dual Enrollment and AP: The Plot Thickens

Readers had plenty of information and opinions on the dual enrollment–versus–AP debate.  

Several wrote in to say, correctly, that even if students pass and get credit for dual-enrollment classes, they may receive lower grades at 16 than they would have later. That can reduce their overall college GPA enough to affect their chances of getting into medical, law or graduate school. With AP, by contrast, the college GPA is unaffected.

That’s true. A couple of years ago I had a student show up in my office to ask to have a grade changed for a class she took when she was 14. She had recently graduated from a selective university and was applying for very competitive law schools, and the grades she earned at 14 put her GPA just below the threshold for something. She was the first student of that sort I’d seen, but I doubt she’ll be the last. A mediocre performance on an AP exam wouldn’t have had the same effect.

A few readers suggested that International Baccalaureate programs are better than AP, but with many of the same advantages. Both of my kids did the IB program, and they both reported that it prepared them well for rigorous courses at their respective flagship universities. TG also took a stray AP course at one point to fulfill a requirement; she didn’t have much positive to say about it. That’s a sample size much too small to mean much, but it certainly doesn’t contradict what some have said. For present purposes, though, it’s reasonable to consider AP and IB different flavors of the same thing. They’re both standardized curricula with external grading of a single high-stakes exam (or, in the case of IB, series of exams).

A few readers pointed out that elite institutions just treat any college-level work done in high school as part of high school; at most, it might allow a student to bypass a prerequisite. That defeats the cost-saving argument for either dual enrollment or AP. That was true of my experience with AP at Williams: it allowed me to skip freshman English, but it didn’t save any time or money. That’s not unusual.

Finances were a much stickier subject. Different states, and sometimes districts, set budgets differently. With AP, there’s typically no charge for the class, but there is a cost for the exam. If you take several AP classes, that can add up to hundreds of dollars. It’s far cheaper than college tuition, but if you haven’t been in the habit of paying tuition, it can come as a shock. (I’m told there are fee waivers for needy students, but I don’t know how accessible those are.) With dual enrollment, budget models vary widely. The one commonality is that dual-enrollment classes are not eligible for federal financial aid, such as Pell Grants. Some states cover the cost, but some don’t. Sometimes school districts pay for it. Sometimes colleges have donors who cover the cost for certain students, whether defined by need or geography. And sometimes families simply have to pay their own way without financial aid, which has obvious effects on equitable access. Colleges often offer the courses at a substantial discount to try to offset the impact on equity, but that tends to make the courses money losers, as a recent CCRC study discovered. For institutions that are already strapped, that’s a real challenge.

One reader wrote of a scheme by which a college offered a dual-enrollment class in a high school without charge, but the credits only counted at that college. Students who enrolled elsewhere didn’t get the credits. That struck me (and the reader) as sleazy. Yes, there’s an obvious marketing and recruitment component to dual enrollment: it’s reasonable to hope that students who have good experiences in their classes might think more highly of the college. But using it as a sort of entrapment crosses a line. The point of dual enrollment should be to help students move forward on the paths they set for themselves, rather than to lock them down.

Academic gatekeeping emerged as an issue, though people took different views of it. Some argued that AP courses are usually only open to high-achieving students, but dual-enrollment courses are open to everyone, so the quality-of-class conversation is higher in AP. Others took the same premise and concluded that dual enrollment is more equitable. One parent wrote in to say that her kids are college-bound, but toward nonselective places, and AP seems pointless for them. Dual enrollment offers the prospect of taking courses in subjects that the local high school doesn’t teach.

Finally, several readers made a strong distinction within the category of dual enrollment. If the course is taught by a college professor on a college campus with other college students, they’d choose that; if it’s taught in a high school by a high school teacher with other high school students, they’d choose AP. The argument was that deputizing high school teachers amounts to watering down the experience; at least with AP there’s some sort of external check. I’ll just leave that one there.

Thank you to everyone who wrote in. I’m consistently impressed, and grateful for, the thoughtfulness and civility with which my wise and worldly readers engage these questions.