Pensacola State College's dual enrollment program, which allows high school students to take college courses for credit while still enrolled in secondary school, served 2,800 students during the 2024-25 academic year, an 18 percent increase over three years. The growth is a genuine success. It also obscures a distribution problem that the program's administrators acknowledge but have not yet solved.
Gulf Islands National Seashore. Photo: Aaron Burden / Unsplash.
Participation in dual enrollment is not uniform across Escambia County's high schools. Schools in higher-income zip codes have dual enrollment participation rates that are three to four times higher than schools serving lower-income populations. The pattern is consistent with national research on advanced coursework access: dual enrollment requires that students and families know the program exists, understand how to navigate enrollment, have transportation to PSC campuses or online access for hybrid courses, and have the academic preparation that makes college-level coursework accessible.
None of those requirements are prohibitive for families with resources. All of them create friction for families without. The result is a program that delivers significant academic and economic value, dual enrollment credits reduce time-to-degree and student debt, while concentrating that value in the populations that were already most likely to attend college.
PSC President Ed Meadows has said publicly that expanding equitable access is an institutional priority. The college and the school district have a joint working group examining access barriers, with a report expected in summer 2026. That report should be public when released, and the school board should hold a dedicated session on its findings. Dual enrollment is one of the highest-return investments in educational equity available to this community.