The High Schoolers Graduating with College Degrees

Paisley Russell was an extremely busy high school student.

By her senior year at Riverside High School in Durham, she was the co-captain of the softball team and president of the school’s National Honors Society chapter. She was also taking classes on two campuses: her high school and Durham Technical Community College.

Russell had learned as a sophomore about dual enrollment, an initiative that allows high school students in North Carolina to earn college credits—and in some cases a two-year degree or industry certification—through partnerships with local community colleges and universities. Russell had her sights set on becoming a doctor, and after attending a virtual Q&A about dual enrollment, she decided it would help her get to her dream job faster.

“I wanted to go super far in my degrees, and this felt like a head start,” Russell said recently.

This spring, Russell graduated from Riverside with a high school diploma and her associate’s in science from Durham Tech. Thanks to all the credits she accrued as a high schooler, she began her first semester at UNC Greensboro this fall as a junior majoring in kinesiology on a pre-medicine track. She stands to save more than $15,000 on tuition if she finishes her undergraduate degree in two years.

Participation in dual enrollment plans has exploded since the General Assembly established the free Career and College Promise (CCP) program in 2011. About 95,000 students participated across the state in 2024-25, up from 78,800 the previous school year and 11,000 in 2014. 

Durham Public Schools in 2023 set a goal that by 2028, one in four of its students would graduate with a high school diploma and either an associate’s degree or equivalent certification. In the 2024-25 school year, the most recent for which data is available, 22% of DPS graduates simultaneously earned a community college credential, up from 18% the previous year.

“As we look at trades and other jobs, there are so many great jobs that make so much money that fit these kids’ needs,” said Olu Ariyo, director of college recruitment and high school partnerships at Durham Tech. “The exposure is so much better in high school than it is when they’re finished, and now they’re trying to figure out what to do, and there’s no one to point them in the right direction.”

Workforce Development

When I graduated from Riverside in 2008, students and school administrators talked about community colleges as schools for flunkies. If you weren’t smart enough to get into a four-year school, you enrolled at a community college. Years later, those same community colleges are being heralded by graduates—like my mother and me—and administrators as places to jump-start a career.

The dual enrollment boom comes as North Carolina’s community colleges are emphasizing their role as growth engines for the state’s workforce. State lawmakers have pointed to community colleges as a way to connect workers, particularly young adults, with growing business sectors in health care, biotechnology, and life sciences. The North Carolina Community College System appropriation in this year’s state budget was $1.86 billion, up 51% from fiscal year 2020. That’s compared with a 17% increase between fiscal year 2010 and 2020.

This year, lawmakers gave the system $57.5 million for a new funding model called Propel NC. It’s designed to reward schools for programs that lead to jobs in high-demand sectors, rather than solely compensating them based on course enrollment.

North Carolina’s dual enrollment program launched in 1983 when the General Assembly passed legislation allowing high school students to enroll in community college courses. The state later introduced additional programs that created more ways for students to earn college credit. In 2011, the state consolidated all of those programs into Career and College Promise.

Participation grew modestly, but representation from minority groups was uneven, according to a study commissioned by the State Board of Education in 2022. The state board adopted new policies to deepen relationships between community colleges and public school systems and to appeal to a wider group of students. 

“I think the key difference now is that we are more aligned than ever before,” said Sneha Shah-Coltrane, senior director of the Office of Advanced Learning and Gifted Education at the NC Department of Public Instruction. “Districts, colleges, the state agencies, et cetera. It’s not as random. Before, a kid could take any course they wanted, doing anything they wanted, and it was just what you did. Now, we are trying to get more integrated and aligned.”

Students can take three dual enrollment pathways. College Transfer students can take college courses taught by a professor in partnership with a local institution, with the expectation of moving to a two- or four-year institution after graduation. Through the Career and Technical Education pathway, they can earn a certification for specific jobs or industries. A growing number of students are enrolled in Cooperative Innovative High Schools, also known as early colleges, which are often housed on a community college or university campus and focus on a particular industry like health care or environmental sustainability. City of Medicine Academy, a healthcare-focused school in Durham, sits two blocks from Duke Regional Hospital.

College Transfer is the most popular pathway, accounting for 59% of dual enrollment students, with Cooperative Innovative High Schools at 24% and Career and Technical Education at 17%.

The state says all three pathways have yielded mostly positive outcomes for participants, compared with their peers on traditional high school tracks. According to a 2026 report by the Department of Public Instruction, students with Career and Technical Education credentials saw 14% higher cumulative wages compared to students who didn’t have those credentials over a seven-year period. College Transfer students earned 7% higher wages over the same period. The report also said that while there were no “statistically significant differences in employment rates or annual wages” for Cooperative and Innovative High School students, economically disadvantaged students and students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups who took that route saw positive impacts on their annual wages.

“What we want to do is to make sure that, as much as we can, we tie our programming to regional education and economic development needs, but also to a child’s passion and their interest,” Shah-Coltrane said. “I feel like our students and families are getting more choices than ever before in high school and K-12. We want them to feel prepared and to have choices and know that they have options.”

Skipping Ahead

Dual enrollment students in Durham have access to world-class universities, Research Triangle Park, and Duke University Hospital System. Durham Tech, where high school students are enrolled in 100 courses this fall, has doubled down on partnerships with companies like pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk to help build curricula that feed into life sciences jobs.

In 2024, Durham Tech partnered with Durham Public Schools and Duke Health to establish the Durham Early College of Health Sciences with the help of a $29 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The school started this year with 101 students. Duke Health plans to hire at least 60 students after graduation to fill much-needed positions for nurses and technicians.

Families who participate in dual enrollment save thousands of dollars on college tuition, which is covered by their school district, though students are on the hook for textbooks and course fees. 

In addition to the tuition help, Durham Tech works with families to remove barriers like transportation and scheduling conflicts that might interfere with a student’s ability to join the program.

“They have access to all the resources they need,” Ariyo said. “We have people in [Durham Tech] student government as high school students. We have students who use all our resources, from our pantry to free tutoring. They really are embedded as college students, they just look younger.”

Tevin Jones has been working as Durham Tech’s campus liaison for dual enrollment partnerships since 2020. Jones works with students as early as ninth grade to help set them on the path that is academically best for them. This kind of early planning makes an accelerated associate degree possible, he said. A full degree requires roughly 20 courses. Students get six terms of eligibility—11th and 12th grade, plus two summers—which works out to three or four classes a term, often split across two eight-week blocks.

Jovonia Lewis, a former Durham Public Schools Board of Education member, has put both her sons—Andrew and Joshua—through the early college at J.D. Clement, a Cooperative and Innovative High School located on North Carolina Central University’s campus. Students take courses with other early college students, as well as with NCCU students.

Andrew graduated from J. D. Clement last year and is now beginning his first year at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Alabama, with enough credits to classify as a junior. Joshua is a junior at J.D. Clement. He plans to pursue a degree in criminal justice after graduation; NCCU is on the list of possible schools. 

“Giving them those opportunities to expand their perspective has been amazing for us financially,” Jovonia Lewis said.

Even though Joshua is enrolled at early college, he is still involved in student activities at Jordan High School, his district school. Joshua plays on the soccer team and enjoys going to football games with his friends.

Dual enrollment students have more schedule flexibility than their peers. In addition to in-person classes, schools offer asynchronous courses online, which Jones said many students prefer because they can pursue sports, jobs, and other commitments.

But the programs come with trade-offs. Students miss out on activities like pep rallies at their high school and aren’t in class every day with the kids who will attend their senior prom.

Between softball and academics, Russell—the aspiring doctor who started at UNC Greensboro this fall—already had a tight schedule. Her college course load left little room for socializing; Russell took eight classes her junior year, five at Durham Tech and three at Riverside.

“Throughout the process, I continuously thought about stopping it and going back to only high school classes because I sacrificed my entire social life for it,” Russell said. “I lost a lot of friends starting out, and no one understood why I was doing it.”

Still, the savings on tuition and the head start on her degree made the commitment worth it, and Russell says she would recommend dual enrollment to her friends.

“Absolutely, do it,” Russell said. “When you look back at it, you’re gonna have no regrets, and especially if you want to go into a rigorous career, it sets you up very well.”