(Radio Iowa) – The number of high school students who are also taking community college courses at the same time continues to rise. Department of Education Community Colleges Bureau Chief Amy Gieseke talks about what’s called joint enrollment.
“In total, joint enrollment students earning credit at both the high school and college level comprised 47 percent of all headcount enrollment at our community colleges. So that number is also increasing each year,” she says. “Last year it was 45-point-eight percent and this year 47 percent of all enrollments. At five colleges, joint enrollment is over 50 percent of their total headcount. One college is over 60 percent, and 12 colleges have total headcount enrollment over 40 percent.”
Gieseke says you only have to take one class to be included in the headcount enrollment, so the joint enrollment credit hours are only 32 percent of statewide community college credit hours. “Of all high school students, 33 percent are taking some type of joint enrollment,” she says. Gieseke says the number of high school students joint enrolling has increase quite a bit since it started in 2010.
“With just over 38-thousand high school students participating in 2010. And now we’re at the nearly 58-thousand And that is a jump from 25-point-seven percent of all total community college enrollment to now 47 percent,” she says.
Gieseke says girls continue to outpace the number of high school boys joint enrolled at 54 percent.
