Chasing credits: Colleges say dual enrollment is on the rise in Nebraska schools

On a Thursday morning in their first class of the day, three students sit at the front of a classroom at Gering High School in western Nebraska. It’s German class, and students practice using the language for the entirety of the lesson. On this particular day, they’re learning about the Chiemsee lake in southeastern Germany.

Junior Hailey Steinwart took a few turns reading lines of German from the textbook.

“When you have it as the beginning class, you would think, ‘Oh, you have to learn a whole new language in the morning,’” Steinwart said. “But I enjoy it. I like the way he teaches. He really likes his job. I like that he knows what he's doing."

Her teacher, Andy Stobel, said they get through one book a year, which is accelerated from a usual German class that takes two years for one book. That's because students can take Stobel’s class for dual credit, a growing opportunity for students to receive both high school and college credit in one class.

“Sometimes, I've had maybe five or six in class and four taking it for credit,” Stobel said. “I encourage them to take it because I said you're going to be doing the dual credit work anyway, so you may as well get the bonus of graduating with the credits.”

That mentality has taken off with students.

Dual enrollment has grown across Nebraska from 26% of high schoolers enrolled in 2016 to 33% in 2022, according to a Nebraska Statewide Workforce & Educational Reporting System report. Several college officials, like University of Nebraska at Kearney director of dual enrollment Allisha Melroy, said that number has only continued to increase.

“I think I underestimated how big dual enrollment had become and the push for it, how many schools were offering those opportunities and the number of credit hours kids were coming into college with already,” Melroy said.

Melroy added students can learn both the intensity of a college class in an environment they already know while also getting a head start on their degree.

“The greatest thing dual enrollment does is it makes the senior year really count for kids where maybe in the past, it didn't always feel that way,” she said.

UNK partnered with 10 schools to offer dual credit courses this year, including Gering’s German class. Stobel said he sees those benefits playing out for his students.

“It also gives them confidence going into a university class,” he said. “‘I've done this work before. I've worked at this pace before.’ It's familiar, and they're ready to hit the ground running.”

Melroy said she hopes to continue expanding dual credit offerings to more schools, especially smaller school districts.

“It's finding little pockets of time and little pockets of experiences for kids where maybe they can only add one class this year, but the following year they can add another one,” Melroy said. “I think starting anywhere is better than nothing.”

Online offerings 'level the playing field'

Students can take dual credit courses in a variety of ways — at their high school, on the college campus or in an online format. Melroy said they aim to have students take classes in-person, whether it’s at the high school or at UNK.

Jennifer Pedersen, director of the dual credit program at Western Nebraska Community College, said the in-person classes on the college campus can connect students with people they may not interact with otherwise.

“A really great class here at WNCC has students that are 50, you have a dual credit student that's a junior in high school and you have a traditional student in there,” Pedersen said. “If all three of those students are willing to talk in a class, the perspectives that come out in those discussions really can't be duplicated.”

While WNCC has campuses in Scottsbluff, Alliance and Sidney, not every student can get to those campuses or have access to a teacher at their high school teaching dual credit. For those students, Pedersen said WNCC offers online courses. While online isn’t ideal, she said it helps the college connect with every school in its region.

“Being able to offer this in 25 schools in our service area, to me, the bonus is that we're leveling the playing field for students in rural Nebraska in the western part of the state,” Pedersen said.

WNCC started offering free dual credit classes this school year. Pedersen said it didn’t have much of an impact on enrollment. Instead, she’s seeing students think more about how dual credit can help them reach their future goals.

“I've talked to some students from Garden County, and they were really honest about why they were taking classes,” Pedersen said. “A lot of them, you know, ‘I'm paying for my own education, and so my parents have helped me set up a budget, and so I need these classes because it's going to help me in the long run.’”

Pedersen said faculty does everything they can to make sure a dual credit class will be worth it for a student, especially when it comes to transferring those credits to another college.

It’s fairly easy to transfer in-state because the Nebraska colleges collaborate on what courses work, but out of state can take a little more effort. Pedersen shared an example where some of her students were transferring to a public speaking class to Kansas State. She was able to help them get credit for the class after sending materials like the course syllabus, assignments and course objectives to the registrar.

“We've really been doing a lot of outreach this semester about calling other schools, ‘Will you take this class before I register a student for a class?’” Pedersen said. “Because I certainly don't want to waste their time.”

At Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, almost 1,200 students are taking a dual credit course this year. This is up from last school year when enrollment was around 1,000 students, according to Kayla Thurman, director of early entry and program development. One of the potential reasons for the increased enrollment is that MPCC, like other community colleges in the state, started offering dual credit classes for free.

“Since we have seen that growth and we have seen the buy-in and the commitment from our instructors, there's really no topics off limit that we aren't able to reach out to our instructors and be able to provide those classes,” Thurman said.

Thurman added they offer 150 dual credit courses. Those courses can be made into specific pathways, like welding or teaching, which is becoming common in dual credit programs across the state.

Jody Tomanek, vice president for academic affairs at MPCC, said one of the biggest challenges is making sure students are prepared to take this class at a higher level.

“Do you understand the work that goes into it? Do you understand what you're doing?” Tomanek said. “Just making sure they really are understanding what they're signing up for, I think, is the challenge of, ‘Oh, sure, it's free, I'll do it.’”

However, the free courses have helped expand access to dual enrollment for students who couldn’t afford it before. For example, Tomanek said a high school class may have 30 students total, but only 15 would take it for dual credit because of the cost.

“Even though they got the same education, the same material, they didn't get that college credit because they couldn't afford it,” she said. “This levels that playing field that now all 30 can take that and have that college credit.”

A high school diploma and a degree

Dual credit also offers the chance for students to go so far as to earn an associate’s degree by the time they graduate from high school.

“I'm always in amazement of those kids, because they've done things on their own time,” Tomanek said. “Maybe they come down in the evening and take a class outside of the school day, and in those instances, it's not for dual credit. They're getting no high school credit for that. It's just something that's a goal of theirs on their own, that, hey, I really want to finish that.”

Bridger Wallace, a senior at Gering High School, will be one of those students. He has taken hours of dual credit classes, starting with auto body which counted for six.

“I've taken college welding,” he said. “I've taken communications, English, history, personal finance, math — two years of math.”

He plans to graduate in May with his associate’s degree in applied science in automotive technology from Western Nebraska Community College.

“It means a lot, something to show for all the work that I put in,” Wallace said. “Then when I go to college, I can focus on majors and minors, and not really main classes, like core classes.”

Wallace said it was a lot of work and time management, but it will be worth it as he looks forward to what he will do next in college — which, like many students, he is still figuring out.