In collaboration with two colleagues from Yale University, Zhengren Zhu, Assistant Professor of Economics, received a grant from the Urban Institute’s Student Upward Mobility Initiative (SUMI) for a research study titled Dual Enrollment Courses and Upward Mobility: Which Skills, and for Whom?

The research team will be investigating the impacts of dual enrollment (DE) on students’ college enrollment, graduation, and early career outcomes. Using Texas educational administrative and test data, community college syllabi, and National Student Clearinghouse postsecondary enrollment and completion records, the team will employ quasi-experimental methods and develop a scalable system for measuring the skills embedded in DE courses and the skills students develop through those DE courses. Then, they will link these skill measures to students’ college and labor-market outcomes and assess which skills drive economic success and economic mobility.

Throughout the study, special attention will be given to how skill access and development, along with their effects on outcomes, vary across demographic and geographic contexts.