Bridging College and Careers: Using Dual Enrollment to Enhance Career and Technical Education Pathways

The Concurrent Courses Initiative (CCI), funded by The James Irvine Foundation from 2008 until 2011, comprised eight secondary/postsecondary partnerships across California that offered dual enrollment programs with supplemental student supports. The goal of the CCI was to expand access to supportive, career-focused dual enrollment for students often underserved by such programs and underrepresented in higher education, with the expectation that participating students would prosper in college subsequently. In this paper we examine the estimated effect of participation in the CCI on various student outcomes for the first two years of the initiative