High schoolers who are dual enrolled drive community college growth in Colorado

Enrollment growth in Colorado community colleges is being driven by high schoolers.

Concurrent enrollment programs allow high school students to receive college credit for courses they take tuition-free, often at their high school campus.

High school students are on track to make up half of the state's 88,119 community college students, now making up 39,326 of the state's students, according to Colorado Community College System data. That's growth of nearly 7.6% over the previous year.

Yvette Klinger took about a dozen college classes during her years at Northglenn High School through concurrent enrollment.

She's in the P-Tech Pathway program via the Adams 12 school district and Front Range Community College (FRCC). Klinger will soon graduate with an associate degree in Computer Information Systems.  She wants to go into cyber security.

"You need to think kind of like a hacker to also protect from said hackers. And that's what I really like the most. I really like thinking outside the box," said Klinger.

Her diploma, it's all been tuition free, and that's been a key motivator for her, "I've seen my dad pay off his debt. He's in his 50s, and he only paid it off two years ago," Klinger said. "Having that ability to basically cut my costs, and I'll be able to worry less about it in the future."

Many of the state's concurrent enrollment programs are aligned to workforce needs. And educators say it's what high schoolers want: an opportunity to taste future careers sooner rather than later.

"Especially in high schools, word of mouth is great advertising, said Front Range Community College Associate Vice President for Concurrent Enrollment April Menzies. "So I think as students have seen their friends and other family members take advantage of that opportunity, I think that has been part of the growth."

Klinger wants to go into an accelerated master's program next, hoping to land that degree by age 22.

"Not many people can say they have a master's degree so young," she said.

And Klinger advises other high schoolers to go for it, saying that once you've taken a few of those dual enrollment courses, you'll realize how far you've gone.

"You're going to be so happy with yourself," she added.

Colorado's Community College System has made a concerted effort to design its programs so students don't have to choose between "college or career".  Their work-based learning programs allow students to do both.

Sarah Heath, Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs for the system said, "This provides learners the ability to weigh their options and opportunities, including the amount of tuition cost savings they have by taking college level coursework in high school. In FRCC's case, this aligns to their work with districts and businesses to build P-Tech programming which includes work based learning in addition to the college courses."