Michigan wants more college grads. Can boosting spending for dual enrollment help?

• The share of Michigan students who take college classes while attending a high school is one of the lowest in the nation
• Advocates for higher education attribute it to a lack of awareness. School districts need to pay for the college courses with their per-pupil state-funding allotment
• An effort is underway to create a new fund of $62 million to cover the costs statewide

Renato Recillas always knew he would go to college. Though his parents didn’t graduate from high school, he found a path that led him to getting accepted into the incoming class this fall at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Unlike other freshmen, Recillas will start with 61 college credits — and will only need to attend U-M for two years to earn a bachelor's degree. 

Recillas found this path while attending Fenville High School in southwest Michigan and simultaneously taking early middle college classes at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor. His high school paid his tuition, books and fees. This opportunity, known as dual enrollment, gave Recillas, 19, the chance to earn an associate degree in arts and sciences and put him closer to earning a bachelor’s degree while in high school. Based on U-M’s current costs, Recillas’ dual enrollment saved him nearly $40,000.

“I feel very grateful, very proud and just very happy,” said Recillas. “But it wasn’t easy. I had orientation (recently) and got to wander around the campus. I thought: ‘What I worked for has led me to this.’” 

But only a minority of students take advantage of similar opportunities: Statewide, 31,106 public high school students, about 7%, participated in 2022-23, putting Michigan in the bottom 10 states for students taking college classes while in high school, according to data from Columbia University. 

Those who do often excel: 77% of Michigan high school students enrolled in a postsecondary institution within a year of graduation, compared with 55.8% of students who did not participate in dual enrollment.

Advocates are working to boost participation by lobbying lawmakers to allocate $62 million for the program in this year’s unresolved state budget, especially after a recent pilot program at Schoolcraft College showed that dual enrollment dramatically increased with state funds earmarked for tuition and fees. Currently, public schools have to pay for students to take college courses with their per-pupil state funding allotment, the pool of money districts must draw on for numerous other expenses.

“It creates a huge disincentive from promoting dual enrollment,” said Brandy Johnson, president of Michigan Community College Association.

Advocates are pointing to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s goal of increasing the percentage of residents with college degrees or skills certificates to 60% by 2040. Michigan now ranks 37th nationwide, with 51.8%, below the national average of 55%. 

Whitmer and lawmakers have made several investments to boost college attainment, including spending more than $70 million on the Michigan Reconnect program that provides tuition-free college for adults without degrees.

Advocates say dual enrollment programs are an affordable investment, especially since lawmakers for years have included between $3 million and $3.5 million in state budgets for private school dual enrollment programs.

Johnson, along with other advocates, want lawmakers to put aside money for similar programs for public high school students.

Brian Broderick, executive director of the Michigan Association of Non-public Schools, supports the effort. In 2012, lawmakers began setting aside an annual appropriation for private high school students to take college classes. Prior to that, a private high school student who wanted to take college classes had to register as a public school student and take a class to generate funding that would pay for their college tuition.

“We want to get more kids with college credentials,” said Broderick. “It makes it easier.”

Currently, there isn’t an appropriation to support dual enrollment for private school students in the proposed budgets of the governor and Democratic-controlled Senate. Broderick said he doesn’t understand why the appropriation is only in the Republican-controlled House budget.

“t doesn’t comport with the thought that we are trying to get more kids with college credentials  and college classes but we are making it difficult them to utilize dual enrollment,”  

‘A much bigger incentive’

 Advocates for post-secondary education emphasize the benefits of dual enrollment: high school students who participate earn higher grades, graduate from high school and have higher enrollment and degree completion in college. Additionally, research shows that dual enrollment participation leads to improved college outcomes for Black and Hispanic students, who are underrepresented in higher education.

They also say that increasing dual enrollment can save millions of dollars in costs on state scholarship programs such as the Michigan Achievement Scholarship. 

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To accomplish that, Michigan’s funding model needs to change so more school districts improve promotion of dual enrollment opportunities, Johnson said.

“If schools could get a totally different revenue stream that covers dual enrollment tuition and fees, K-12 schools would have a much bigger incentive for shouting from the rooftops the benefits of dual enrollment,” Johnson said.

(Read a report on increasing dual enrollment commissioned by the Michigan Community College Association here.)

The Detroit Regional Chamber supports changing the funding model for dual enrollment because the existing model “provides a huge financial disincentive for districts to enroll students at scale,” said Greg Handel, chief education and talent officer for the business organization.

“We’re interested in how we get more kids in dual enrollment because we know there is a positive relationship between dual enrollment and students, especially low income and first generation students, who are more likely to directly enroll in higher ed after high school,” said Handel.

What other states are doing

But the funding mechanism is a constraint to growth, Handel said.

School districts are required by Michigan law to make dual enrollment options available to students, but the districts have to pay the full tuition of students who enroll.

“While school districts might be required to make it available, there is a limit to how far they have to go in promoting it,” Handel said.

Especially compared to other states: Nearby Indiana is one of the top states with students participating in dual enrollment, Handel noted.

“There is no reason we should be taking that much of a back seat to Indiana,” Handel said. “It’s a good example of what’s possible with the right policy.”

In most states, dual enrollment is paid for with another source of revenue, Handel said, unlike Michigan’s policy requiring school districts to use the per-pupil allotment, which was $9,608 in last year’s budget.

There is steady growth of dual enrollment nationally, said John Fink, senior research associate at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University.

“It’s growing especially where there has been more (state) financial investment in states like Texas, California, Indiana,” said Fink. 

Tuition costs for community colleges vary by schools but they add up and dip into a district’s budget that is already tight, said Schoolcraft College President Glenn Cerny. 

“What we’ve seen with our school districts is they are very apprehensive to even market or even tell students about the dual enrollment options,” said Cerny. “They would rather keep the money, and we are on the same page with them. We do not want dual enrollment to be funded out of the K-12 budget because it impacts the entire operational budget. We believe there should be a set of funds set aside so the community colleges and the K-12 districts can work together on behalf of the students.”

Pilot project

For a 2024 dual enrollment pilot project at Schoolcraft College, state Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, secured $1.2 million for programs in the Plymouth-Canton, Livonia, Clarenceville, Garden City and Northville public school districts.

Dual enrollment increased 31% compared with the fall of 2023 and by 90% compared with the fall of 2021, Cerny said. Students earned 5,339 credit hours during the pilot project.

“Lo and behold, now that the K-12 superintendents knew that there was not going to be a budget impact, they were all about marketing this to their students,” Cerny said. “The more students get access to a college education sooner, we know a lot of things will happen: They are more likely to continue their college education, they are more likely to complete that class and they are going to be a lot more engaged in high school.”

Costs are a few hundred dollars per college class. But that adds up for school districts, Cerny said.

Polehanki said she is thrilled that an effort is being made to expand the pilot project statewide by seeking separate funding for school districts.

“Our public schools, which are still cash-strapped from decades of financial neglect from the state, should be able to implement dual enrollment without having to dip into their per-pupil funding allowance,” Polehanki said.

Students who have participated in dual enrollment say it’s an incredible opportunity.

“I never knew it was a thing to take college credits while in high school,” said Abdullah Aljanabi, who earned an associate degree from Macomb Community College while attending Cousino High School in Warren and will be attending Wayne State University in fall. His head start in high school will save him nearly $35,000 in tuition and fees.

“It was transformational, professionally, academically and personally,” said Aljanabi, 18.

Opening doors

At Watervliet Public Schools, on the west side of Michigan, north of Benton Harbor, district officials will continue to promote dual enrollment.

Only seven students were participating in the small school district when Superintendent Ric Seager began his post in 2019. Last semester, 93 kids participated in dual enrollment, a 14-fold increase. Of the 1,450 students in the district, 360 are in high school, so 25% are participating in postsecondary courses while in high school.

The district provides academic and social support and even transportation in order for the students to be successful, which adds to the costs beyond tuition and books, Seager said.

“You don’t see a 14-fold increase like we did unless you provide additional support for those kids,” Seager said. “Watervliet is a working-class community, and so a lot of these kids don’t come from families with college graduation in their background or even college attendance.”

It’s important to send a message that education and skills are the keys to getting into better-paying jobs and that is why the district wants to open doors for those students.

But it costs the district nearly $400,000 annually.

“It’s important to be investing in this,” Seager said. “Does it hurt? Yes. It does pinch our budget. It’s a burden. It would be nice to have a different funding stream for this. We’re doing this because it’s good for our kids. It helps them to realize they can achieve their dreams.”