Double registration courses are considered some of the best ways to prepare students with rigor and content of college programs.
Not only do these courses offer students a recovery on credits once they have arrived in college, but they also offer them skills such as time management, critical thinking and study habits that researchers say they encourage them to register and stay at university.
The number of students with double registration has booming in recent years. According to a 2024 study From the Community College College Community Research Center of Columbia University, double registrations increased from 46% from 2015 to 2021, and 18% from 2021 to 2023.
Research shows that it can also be difficult to access these courses, especially for colored students and those in low -income areas. Often, state policies force students to pass complicated examinations or pay to take courses. Some areas may not have enough qualified teachers to offer them.
These data have expanded the understanding of researchers in education of double registration programs, including the way in which access varies from one state to another and the most crucial subjects for double inscriptions.
When it is done correctly, according to experts, double registration can be a critical route from high school to college, especially since today's secondary schools less prepared To go to higher education. Most educational experts agree that to do double registration work, kindergarten schools in the 12th year, higher education establishments and governments of states must work together to improve access to prices and ensure that all students can take advantage of it.
Obstacles at the entrance
The double registration can save students and time, explains John Fink, the main research partner at the Columbia's Community College Research Center and one of the main authors of the double registration study. He can also help students explore deeper level content before going to university. Beyond that, lessons help students see that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to continue a university degree, he says.
In the Columbia study, the researchers followed the students who began to take registration courses at duplicate in 2015 up to four years after their secondary school diploma. According to their conclusions, 81% of students who took courses with double registration in 2015 went to university the first year after high school and 42% finished the college four years after completing their secondary studies.
“The pure strengthening of the confidence to do well and succeed in a college course, to ensure that a university instructor tells you that you can do it, that you are a student – this strengthening of confidence is one of the first things that people will say is the power of these courses,” says Fink.
The study has shown that low-income, black and Hispanic students are considerably underrepresented in double registration programs. The obstacles to access vary from state to state, known as Fink. In about half of the country, for example, students have to pay to take the lessons. Some states have eligibility conditions, such as passing a standardized test.
State of mind and messaging can also limit access, says Fink. In some areas, courses are not prioritized. Education leaders cannot contact poorly served schools or under-represented communities, so that students do not know them.
Even those who have heard of it can assume that double registration courses are only richer and higher level students, says Fink.
“The internalized messaging of communities of colored colors and low -income communities which,” I do not know if this thing with double registration is for me “.
Beyond politics and messaging, districts also find it difficult to find qualified teachers for courses, a problem that has been exacerbated by teachers' shortages across the country, says Fink.
Bethany Usher, provost and vice-president of academic affairs at Radford University, noticed this trend of teachers with double under-qualified registration among schools in the southwest of Virginia, where many students come from low-income households and are the first for their family to frequent the university.
In order to be certified to teach double registration courses through a community college, high school instructors must have at least 18 higher level credits in the matter they would teach, says Usher. A biology teacher, for example, would need 18 biology credits in graduates. Often, however, teachers have educational higher education diplomas and have probably not followed this type of specific course.
This leaves many students without the possibility of taking double registrations, which means that they may never realize that college is an option for them, says Usher. “But being able to take motivated students and put them in these courses with double registration, you get a higher percentage of those who will recognize that they have the capacity and go) at university,” she adds.
Best certification track
So Usher and his colleagues from Radford strive to develop a teacher certification program in order to improve access to the double registration in schools in the southwest of Virginia.
The certification courses are entirely online, asynchronous or taught after 17 hours, and target professionals who already have a master's degree, explains Agida Manizade, an interim assistant provost of Radford for higher affairs.
College staff also examine creative and practical methods so that teachers bring equipment to their classrooms so as to prepare their students for higher education. For example, an instructor developing an ecology course will send kits to teachers, who can then carry out laboratory work at home, says Manzade. Later, teachers can meet their instructors to discuss the laboratory.
Students must be prepared for both more advanced content and a state of mind ready for university.
“State of mind is the part that we cannot control as much,” says Usher, “but we try to model this for teachers so that they teach in a way that will help students prepare for university.”
The program also targets gaps and training in local schools. Radford staff often coordinate with directors of the directors to determine which general education subjects lack certified teachers. Currently, the program offers a mathematics program and could soon include biology, English and potentially physics or psychology.
“It is important that it is a collaboration,” says Usher. “We have to look at all of this: what do secondary schools need?” What do community colleges need? And then, what can we offer? ”
Experts encourage double registration programs to focus on crucial materials such as mathematics. A study of California Public Policy Institute noted that the number of students registering for math courses with double registration has more than doubled in the last decade. Students in these courses register in college at higher rates, according to the study.
But college mathematics courses are often the “guardian classes” – difficult classes that are prerequisites for study programs – which prevent students from degree, explains Olga Rodriguez, director of the PPIC higher education center and the main report.
Many high school seniors do not take a mathematics course, says Rodriguez, so when they arrive at university, they have lost a large part of the knowledge on which they need to rely in university mathematics. Students can also postpone math lessons required once they arrive in college, which worsens their loss of learning. The expansion of access to mathematics courses with double registration in high school helps students remain prepared for university, even if they do not enter a STEM field.
“The double registration is really to expand access and especially to the populations who have not been as well served by the double inscription in the past,” explains Rodriguez. “We know that there are key courses that limit opportunities, which are guards, because we know that they pose challenges (to) students achieving their objectives.”
Despite the numerous obstacles to the dual -registration registration programs that still exist, several academic states and districts work harder to pass the word so that more students interest them.
“There are continuous investments in these programs in red and blue states in terms of funding,” said Fink.
In some districts, students learn double registrations in college, so they are already ready to deepen once they reach high school. Other districts have community organizations show how double registrations can help students outside the school.
At the same time, schools can consider incorporating the double registration into a lacée track by default so that it is not only reserved for high performance, says Fink.
Many colleges attract high registration numbers for students with double registration, Fink says: “They therefore really think about the way they are in staff and finance these programs to implement them not only as an acceleration strategy, but as a strategy of university access.”
