Thousands of high school students enrolled in ‘dual credit’ courses in North Dakota

That’s called “dual credit” – as the students get credit for high school as well as college courses.

That information was presented to the Legislature’s interim Education Committee, which has “dual credit” as one of its study areas.

“Board policy requires that high school students who enroll in college courses have a high school GPA of 2.0 or higher,” Deputy Commissioner of Higher Education Lisa Johnson told the Committee. “They’re required to submit and application to the institution, and it may or may not require an application fee at that time.”

Johnson said college credit is awarded upon completion of the course, if the student has a passing grade.

“Even failing grades are recorded in our system,” Johnson said. “They are expected to have the same learning outcomes, the same grading scales and the same course length as a college student taking that same course.”

Johnson told the Committee that up until this fall, 9 of the 11 campuses were involved in dual credit programs. She said the Board of Higher Education just recently approved UND and NDSU to offer dual credit in their respective counties, Grand Forks for UND, and Cass for NDSU.

“That is the service region for those institutions,” Johnson said. She also said the other nine campuses have service regions that don’t necessarily follow county lines, but do serve schools in their areas.

“Sometimes, there’s overlap,” Johnson said. “Or if the institution can’t offer a particular course, they will partner with another North Dakota institution to provide that course.”

Johnson also said about 100 non-North Dakota students are enrolled in dual credit.

“We have 38 students from Minnesota enrolled in dual credit,” Johnson said. “We have 35 from Montana, 19 from South Dakota, and one or two students from Alaska, California, Colorado, Washington, Utah and Wisconsin. They probably found the institution on-line.”

The Bank of North Dakota provides financial assistance to those dual credit students from North Dakota. Bank Education Market Manager Jennifer Bickel told the Committee the program has been in-place since 2011.

“Over those five years, we spent $1.65 million on the program, Bickel said. “We’ve supported almost 2400 students at an average cost of just over $1000 per student.”

The dual credit program is open to high school students from sophomore to senior years.