Dual-credit scholarship for low-income students increases college enrollment

Students involved in the ACE Scholarship Program, which helps high schoolers in low-income families take dual-credit courses, are more likely to enroll in college, according to a new report from the Nebraska Statewide Workforce and Educational Reporting System.

The Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education has run the program since 2007. J. Ritchie Morrow, financial aid officer for the CCPE, said the commission had been hearing from high school counselors about the challenges facing some students who wanted to take dual-credit courses, which are classes that count for both high school and college credits.

“You had students who came from middle- or upper-income families who had the resources to pay the tuition and fees to the college, but you had students from low-income families that weren't able to afford that tuition,” Morrow said. “We had a program that was receiving funding from the legislature that really wasn't accomplishing what we had hoped it would, and so we proposed taking that funding and using it for the ACE scholarship.”

To qualify for the scholarship, students must be enrolled in a need-based program — like SNAP or free and reduced lunch — or have experienced a recent hardship that is impacting the family’s income.

Morrow said the CCPE keeps track of some data like how many students are involved, the amount of classes they take and the college credits they receive, but this new data showed the further impact of the ACE program.

According to the NSWERS report, ACE scholarship students are 11% more likely to attend college over a non-ACE dual-enrollment student.

“The ultimate goal of the ACE scholarship is to prepare students for college and to encourage their enrollment in the college after high school,” Morrow said. “As you can see from the results from that NSWERS study, it is having that effect.”

Alex Brodersen, assistant director for research and evaluation at NSWERS, said the data also showed scholarship recipients consistently graduated from college, especially community colleges.

“The effect, it's not flashy, but it's very durable,” he said. “Small differences, or even in this case, medium and large differences at any scale, they matter a lot when you're talking about thousands and thousands of students.”

About 34% of the students involved in the program from 2017-2023 lived in rural counties, which the report points out is high considering the amount of students who live in urban areas.

“One thing that highlights is that there's a statewide need for this program,” Brodersen said. “It's not isolated into any one particular region.”

While the amount of students receiving scholarships hasn’t drastically changed over the years, the number of classes and credits they take has increased, according to an annual CCPE report on the program. In 2024-25, students took more than 19,000 credit hours across the state.

“We're seeing students really utilizing these dual-enrollment courses a lot more, and of course, those are just the ACE scholarship recipients,” Morrow said.

In a different report from NSWERS, data showed the number of students taking dual-credit classes grew from 26% in 2016 to 33% 2022.