Page 22 - Cybersecurity Career Guide, 4th Edition

dual enrollment
22 START-ENGINEERING.COM
Double
Up Your
Credits
How dual enrollment programs can help students save money, jump-start career plans, and bank college credits at the same time.
It’s just what you do, right? After graduating from high school, you pack yourself up and go off to college, taking one big step down the path towards whatever the future holds for you in work and life.
But this traditional model of going straight from high school to college is starting to come undone. The ever- higher costs of tuition, de- clining numbers of college- age kids overall, and weaker interest in higher education — especially among males — are key forces conspiring to reduce the numbers of kids on college campuses. And COVID showed everyone how
easily learning connections can take place online, instead of requiring teachers and stu- dents to be sharing the same real-world classroom space.
One of the solutions to this brew of challenges can be to reverse the old, familiar model of going to college. In- stead of kids going off to col- lege after finishing high school, educators are work- ing to bring college into the world of high school, blend- ing the two formerly distinct kinds of learning into one, more interesting, cost-effec- tive, and accessible form of education. This ideal lies at the heart of “dual enroll- ment” education, a model
that more and more colleges and high schools are collabo- rating on every year. Student participation increased by al- most 9 percent in 2023 alone.
HOW IT WORKS
Also called “dual credit” or “concurrent enrollment,” dual enrollment programs offer high school students the chance to take classes in a wide range of subjects that
can count for both high school and college credit at the same time. These classes can be taught by college in- structors or high school teachers with advanced training in the topic, either on campus, in a student’s own school, or even online.
There are lots of excellent reasons for students to seek out dual enrollment pro- grams. Costs for classes are