Dual enrollment is expanding in California.

Dual enrollment enables high school students to take college courses and earn college credits. Two other college acceleration programs—Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate—award college credits to students who pass exams, while dual enrollment awards credits for the successful completion of courses.
The California Community Colleges (CCCs) offer 97% of dual enrollment statewide at little or no cost to students. A growing number of four-year institutions have begun to offer the courses, too.
After stagnating during the pandemic, participation began to rebound, reaching nearly 165,000 students or about one-third of the high school class of 2025.
Recent growth in dual enrollment participation has been driven by the College and Career Access Pathways (CCAP) initiative. Established in 2016, CCAP aims to improve access for underrepresented students by offering courses on high school campuses and prioritizing partnerships with historically marginalized communities. CCAP now accounts for 45% of student enrollment in dual enrollment courses.

Participation in dual enrollment varies across demographic groups and regions.

In the class of 2024, Latinos accounted for 49% of all dual enrollment students (vs. 57% of high school students statewide), followed by white students at 22% (vs. 21% statewide), Asian students at 16% (vs. 12% statewide), and Black students at 3% (vs. 5% statewide).
Latino (56%), Asian (13%), and Black (4%) students in CCAP are more representative of their statewide shares. White (19%) students are slightly underrepresented in CCAP.
Female students—who comprise 49% of the class of 2024—are overrepresented in dual enrollment (55%), and male students are underrepresented (43% in dual enrollment vs. 51% of the class of 2024).
In 2024, the Los Angeles/Orange County region had the most dual enrollees (29%), followed by the Bay Area (19%) and the San Joaquin Valley (17%). Since 2016–17, dual enrollment participation has grown most in the Inland Empire (290%), the San Joaquin Valley (249%), and the North/Far North (126%).

CCAP is driving recent growth of dual enrollment, but participation varies across demographic groups

SOURCE: Authors’ calculation using Chancellors Office Management Information System (COMIS) data.

NOTES: The full sample includes 1,155,216 high school graduates between 2015–16 and 2024–25 who enrolled in at least one community college course as “special admits” (SB15) between fall 2012 and fall 2024. We lack high school information for most “special admit” students; we infer their graduating classes using education status (SB11), birth date (SB03), and student age (STD1) during the term in which they took a first dual enrollment course. We rely on California Department of Education enrollment information, which is based on grade and age, to estimate the time of graduation (assuming graduation within four years). Our sample includes students in home school and private high schools. Because our data includes participation through fall 2024, we cannot show numbers for the final term of the class of 2025. Also, participation data may differ from the other published work due to dataset updates and sample restrictions.

A growing number of high school students are earning associate degrees via dual enrollment.

About 60% of dual enrollment courses taken by the class of 2024 were in five subject areas—social and behavioral science (23%), humanities (14%, including English), fine and applied arts (8%), mathematics (7%), and interdisciplinary studies (6%).
The number of dual enrollees completing English composition has more than tripled since 2017 (to over 23,000 in 2024), and the number completing transfer-level math courses has more than doubled (to over 18,000). These are relatively small shares of all dual enrollees, but the growth indicates that more participants are hitting key milestones on the path to college completion.
The class of 2024 took an average of three dual enrollment courses and earned an average of 8.5 credits.
The number of high school students earning a college certificate or degree has increased steadily. In the class of 2024, dual enrollees earned over 3,400 college credentials, including about 1,950 associate degrees.

Dual enrollment outcomes vary across demographic groups and geographic regions.

Over time, the number of dual enrollment credits earned has risen across all student groups. In 2024, Asian dual enrollment students on average completed 11 college credits, 2–4 more than other racial/ethnic groups.
Credit-earning is roughly similar for male and female students. In 2024, female students were earning a higher share of college credentials via dual enrollment (59% vs. 39%), roughly mirroring their representation in dual enrollment.
In 2024, high schoolers in the San Joaquin Valley earned the highest number of credits of all regions (10, vs. 8 statewide).

Dual enrollment course-taking and outcomes vary across demographic groups and regions

SOURCE: Authors’ calculation using Chancellors Office Management Information System (COMIS) data.

NOTES: The full sample includes 1,155,216 high school students who graduated between academic years 2015–16 and 2024–25 and enrolled in at least one community college course as a “special admit” (SB15) between fall 2012 and fall 2024. We do not have high school information for most “special admit” students; we infer their graduating classes using the education status (SB11), birth date (SB03), and student age (STD1) during the term in which they took a first dual enrollment course. We rely on California Department of Education student enrollment information, which is based on grade and age, to estimate time of graduation (assuming graduation within four years). We focus on English composition and transfer-level math courses that satisfy the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC) requirements. College credentials include associate degrees and certificates that are credit awards—including those not approved by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. Our sample includes students in home school and private high schools. Sample sizes below 20 are not included.

California continues to invest in dual enrollment.

The state has invested over $700 million to expand dual enrollment through a variety of initiatives, including the CCAP Grant, the Middle College and Early College Grant, and the Golden State Pathways Program Grant.
Several pieces of legislation—including AB 288, AB 30, and Senate Bill 1244—aim to broaden access, remove logistical hurdles, and expand dual enrollment partnership opportunities.
State compacts with the CSU, UC, and CCC systems—CCCas well as the CCC’s Vision 2030 and the recent Master Plan for Career Education—all support the expansion and the goal of increasing the share of students graduating from high school with at least 12 college credits. In the class of 2024, about 3% reached this milestone.