A new resource from MDRC and the National Rural Higher Education Research Center offers community college leaders a closer look at how dual enrollment pathways line up with local jobs.
Dual enrollment is one of the most direct ways community colleges connect high school students to careers. Through career and technical education (CTE) pathways, students can begin earning college credit in high-demand fields before they finish high school. A new interactive tool helps answer a key question for the colleges that offer these programs: are students enrolling in the pathways their local economy needs?
The National Rural Higher Education Research Center, led by MDRC in partnership with RAND and the Early College Research Center at UNC Greensboro, has launched an interactive dashboard that helps answer that question for North Carolina. Built as a companion to the Center’s study of workforce-focused dual enrollment pathways in rural North Carolina, it pairs enrollment records from the state's Career and College Promise program, delivered through the North Carolina Community College System, with labor market projections from the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
The dashboard shows how student participation across 36 CTE dual enrollment program areas compares to projected job openings, job growth, median and entry-level earnings, and job quality ratings for 2024-2034. Users can view the full state or any of North Carolina’s 16 Prosperity Zone sub-regions alongside a workforce index summarizing each program area’s labor market outlook in a single score.
The underlying research supporting the dashboard shows that the fit between the programs students enroll in and the jobs available in their region varies across the state. Not every high-enrollment program maps to strong local demand, and in some fields with solid job prospects and earnings, there is room to grow program offerings.
Community colleges sit at the center of this work. In North Carolina, a state-funded program has placed community college-employed career coaches in high schools that deliver dual enrollment. An evaluation by RAND and UNC Greensboro found that those coaches increased students' likelihood of taking CTE dual enrollment courses and enrolling in two-year colleges, helped in part by their familiarity with local college offerings. For trustees and presidents, the dashboard offers the kind of evidence that strengthens program decisions: a clear line from what students study to the jobs, wages, and growth in their communities.
That connection matters in rural communities especially, which make up much of the state. While the dashboard is focused on North Carolina, it adapts an approach RAND researchers previously used to examine CTE alignment in West Virginia offering a model other states can follow.
MDRC and its partners welcome feedback on the dashboard's usability and are interested in working with additional states to replicate it. Explore the dashboard, additional information, and background on the initiative here.
