Page 22 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for UT Austin

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22
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
How dual enrollment programs can help
students save money, jump-start career plans,
and bank college credits at the same time.
dual enrollment
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
Double
Up Your
Credits
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.
Instead of kids going off to
college 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
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
often much lower than what
college credits cost, helping
families ultimately save
money on tuition. And get-