Despite the growing popularity of dual-credit courses as a college readiness strategy, numerous reviews of the literature have noted a number of important limitations of the research on the effects of dual-credit on student postsecondary outcomes. This study addressed these gaps in the literature by estimating the impact of dual-credit courses on postsecondary access, first-to-second year persistence, and eventual college attainment, and overcame many of the methodological limitations of previous studies. The study utilized a statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS), allowing us to track an entire cohort of students through their transition into postsecondary statewide. Propensity score matching was used in order to reduce the self-selection bias associated with high achieving students being more likely to take dual-credit courses. We explored how the number of dual-credit courses students complete and the subject of the courses influences their impact. We also compared the effects of dual-credit to alternative advanced courses. Our results suggest that dual-credit is a promising strategy for increasing the likelihood of students accessing, persisting through, and completing a degree in postsecondary, and is possibly even more impactful than advanced coursework. However, significant variation in the benefit of dual-credit exists.

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This study examines how intersections of race, class, and collegiate involvement shape students’ educational outcomes, specifically degree attainment. It explores (a) to what extent involvement influences student’s educational outcomes and (b) how the relationship between involvement and outcomes varies by socioeconomic status, race, and the intersection of both. Using data from the National Center on Education Statistics’ Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, statistical analyses, including logistic regression methods, were conducted to explore these relationships. The results of this study suggest that different forms of involvement may have positive or negative relationships with attainment in the aggregate, but these relationships are far more nuanced than they appear when disaggregated. This study sheds light on the intersecting relationship between involvement and attainment for different racial and socioeconomic status subgroups, offers guidance for practitioners and educators, and calls for a closer examination of the causal mechanisms driving diverse relationships between involvement and attainment.