Dual enrollment in Florida’s public high schools, Spring 2020: Few dual enrolled students are taking courses that help students earn bachelors’ degrees in STEM fields.

With fewer Florida families able to afford to send their children off to college because of the pandemic-caused recession, dual enrollment (in which high school students enroll in college courses) will likely become more attractive as a means of cutting the cost of a college education.

That may take a toll on the opportunities that the state’s students will have to enter bachelor degree-level STEM careers, however. This spring, few of the state’s dual enrolled students took courses in math, chemistry and physics that would shorten the time to a degree in STEM fields.

Few students took the calculus courses that are required for bachelors’ degrees in engineering, the physical and computing sciences. Many, many more took courses like College Algebra (or lower) that award college credit for math topics traditionally learned in high school courses. Others took math-for-liberal-arts courses that took them out of the STEM pipeline entirely.

Relatively few students dual enrolled in chemistry and physics, and even fewer took courses in those subjects that would provide progress toward STEM bachelors’ degrees.

The numbers discussed below and displayed at the bottom of this post are from the Florida Department of Education website. The FLDOE continues to do an exemplary job providing data on student course enrollment.

In the Spring 2020 semester, there were 15,666 dual course enrollments in math among Florida public school students. Of these, only 1,377 (8.8%) were in the Calculus 1, 2 and 3 and ordinary differential equations courses required for majors like engineering, chemistry, physics, and computer science. College Algebra, a dual enrollment course often used to divert students from the standard high school math sequence after Algebra 2, accounted for 6,141 enrollments. Dual enrollment trigonometry and precalculus courses – which duplicate the curriculum in courses in the standard high school math sequence, accounted for another 4,558 enrollments. Intermediate Algebra (MAT 1033), which is not taught at Florida State University because it is at too a low level, accounted for another 1,663 enrollments. Finally, there were 1,378 students enrolled in “Math for Liberal Studies” courses, which take students out of the STEM pipeline altogether.

There were only 687 dual enrollments in physics, and 267 of those (39%) were in general education physics courses. Another 123 were enrolled in the algebra-based physics courses required for bachelors’ degrees in the life sciences and admission to medical and dental schools. Finally, 286 were enrolled in the calculus-based courses required for majors in engineering, calculus, meteorology, physics, computer science and other similar majors.

In chemistry, there were 2,820 dual enrollments that ranged over levels from general education to upper division college. General education chemistry courses accounted for 1,075 of the enrollments. The standard STEM major introductory chemistry sequence accounted for the majority of chemistry dual enrollments – 1,641.

To teach a dual enrollment course, an individual must have 18 graduate credit hours in the discipline to be taught. The two most common ways for dual enrollment to be offered are for the student to travel to a college campus to take a course with college students, or for a high school teacher with the necessary graduate credits to offer a college course on a high school campus.