October 24, 2025
Dual enrollment work-based courses allow high school students to gain college credit and practice workplace skills at the same time. This step-by-step model offers:
Today’s high school students are eager for guidance and clarity on how to get an education and enter the workforce. But most don’t know about options beyond entering the workforce or beginning a four-year degree program. Their parents aren’t prepared to navigate the system, either: A 2025 survey by Gallup, the Walton Family Foundation and Jobs for the Future (JFF) found that at least half of parents say they know “only a little” or “nothing at all” about any pathway other than four-year degrees or working a paid job.
Dual enrollment, which allows high-school students to earn college credits before they graduate, and work-based learning, which focuses on offering hands-on paid training, are proven strategies for building strong pathways to good jobs.
Typically, these two experiences are in separate spaces in the school day, sometimes forcing students to choose between two essential approaches. Dual enrollment work-based courses can solve this challenge.
Supported by JFF in collaboration with the Tennessee Department of Education and with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, a group of high schools, colleges, and employers tested the Dual Enrollment Work-Based Courses (DE-WBC) model throughout the state on over 600 high school students. The courses applied the model to dual enrollment STEM and computer science courses and the partnerships found innovative ways to adjust to local context, student needs, and hurdles along the way.
A singular course blending dual enrollment and work-based learning, dual enrollment work-based courses (DE-WBCs) enable high school students to simultaneously experience college-level courses, gain college credit, and practice workplace skills.
Traditionally, dual enrollment courses are taught in a classroom by a college instructor or a high school teacher qualified to teach college courses. The DE-WBC model breaks that mold, with students spending at least 20% of the course at the workplace with an employer, with the remaining 80% of learning done in a classroom.
Dual enrollment and work-based learning are two essential approaches to setting students on a college and career path.
Within the last decade, we have seen a growing and heightened movement for more dual enrollment. While community college enrollment overall has continued to decrease, the number of students enrolled in college under the age of 18 has climbed every year.
It’s because dual enrollment works. It’s one of the few educational strategies that has proven to positively impact student success, increasing the likelihood of graduating high school, enrolling and persisting in postsecondary education, and ultimately completing a postsecondary degree.
2023 marked the first year colleges reported dual enrollment data into the national IPEDS database, revealing that across the country, community colleges are seeing dual enrollment students represent 21% of total enrollments during the 2022-23 school year, with some states seeing representation at over 50% of their community college enrollees.
However, work-based learning is also key to securing a quality job. Nearly 90% of employers prefer job candidates with prior experience—even for entry-level positions. 80% of employers say internships provide higher return on investment than any other recruiting method and up to 60% of interns convert to full-time employees. High schools across the country are intentionally embedding work-based learning opportunities into programs of study.
Typically, these two experiences are in separate spaces in the school day, sometimes forcing students to make hard choices about what to participate in given scheduling limitations and competing priorities. Dual enrollment work-based courses can solve this challenge.
Nearly 90% of employers prefer job candidates with prior experience—even for entry-level positions.
80% of employers say internships provide higher return on investment than any other recruiting method
Up to 60% of interns convert to full-time employees
At JFF, we’re reimagining what effective work-based learning looks like. Our newly updated Work-Based Learning Framework gives educators, employers, and workforce advocates a clear road map for designing, implementing, and improving programs for career success. With new quality indicators and real-world exemplars, the framework turns big ideas into actionable strategies.
Check out the framework
DE-WBCs require strong partnerships between secondary schools, postsecondary institutions, and employers in ways that go beyond tradition. Students should be able to identify the connections between the learning that is happening in the classroom and at the workplace. This means that classroom instructors and employers share the responsibilities of teaching and co-designing, and co-assessing course content and learning. Collaboration is key to this model, and classroom instructors and employers should share assessments, collaborate on assignments and projects, and work together to inform the practice of one another. Logistically, the classroom instructor might be the instructor of record, but in application, the two consistently work in sync throughout the semester.
Conversations should start early in the process of DE-WBC development and should focus on mapping workplace training to course content. Task and competency mapping gives both instructor and employer partners the opportunity to determine what skills and information are critical in work and classroom settings.
The critical underpinning of DE-WBCs is the idea that learning should include real-world context. Many course competencies are taught best in a classroom setting, including theory or background knowledge, but others require hands-on practice and experience. The work-based learning component of the DE-WBC must be relevant and applicable to the content learned in the classroom.
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DE-WBC models provide powerful benefits for high schools by enhancing both academic success and career readiness, and yields strong results both broadly and for
students who might face barriers to economic success.
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As traditional college enrollment declines nationwide, dual enrollment offers a powerful solution to expand access, boost student pipelines, and create more affordable and engaging college pathways.
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DE-WBCs can help employers develop a robust talent pipeline by engaging directly with students and observing their technical abilities, work ethic, and problem-solving skills in real time, well before the traditional hiring process begins.
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These case studies showcase how partners across sectors are advancing job quality in real-world settings. Explore how organizations are putting the principles of dual enrollment to work.
Embedding college instructors at high schools increases access, reduces costs.
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A commitment to organization sustains health care work-based learning.
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Employer-instructor collaboration offers strong academic support.
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The DE-WBC model requires partners to think outside the box and innovate on ways to blur dual enrollment coursework and work-based learning experiences. Robust partnerships among the school district, postsecondary partners, and employer partners, plus a shared commitment to continuous improvement, are crucial for maximizing the DE-WBC experience for students.
Tennessee partnerships have embraced the following elements as they have implemented these courses across three school years:
Programs that thrived consistently had instructors who were involved early in the planning process and committed to supporting students through both academic and workplace components. In many cases, high school instructors served as adjuncts, allowing them to bring comfort with the high school environment while delivering rigorous college-level content.
Instructors who volunteered for the role, had their input valued in course design, and, where possible, received stipends for their extra responsibilities, demonstrated a higher level of commitment, which directly contributed to the program’s growth and effectiveness. One instructor emphasized how meaningful the model was to them, reflecting on the real-world impact it had on their students:
“My kids really go out and work outside of the classroom. That was a big deal because they love it. They enjoy being a helper and using their knowledge they learned in my room to help the IT personnel here on campus. The [IT personnel] really heavily depend on them to help them run the Genius Bar.”
Some schools had limited employers to choose from in the area; some had existing employer partners who were hesitant to bring minors into their facilities; some employers were hesitant to move from more individualized work-based learning experiences to designing an experience for a full classroom of students and hosting them on-site. These challenges required grantees to find creative solutions to employer partnerships.
Several schools have leveraged partnerships within their own campuses, utilizing on-site resources to provide students with valuable work-based learning opportunities. For example, several schools developed DE-WBCs in information technology or computer science and chose to partner with their own school districts’ IT departments. Since school districts are sometimes the largest employers in rural areas, there are multiple functions within them that could be well-suited partners for a DE-WBC. Partnering in-house also helps to remove a very common barrier of ensuring students have transportation to a worksite.
Embedding work-based learning into dual enrollment coursework requires strong, sustained collaboration among high schools, colleges, and employer partners. When all parties are fully engaged and committed to keeping students at the center, the model runs more smoothly and leads to stronger outcomes. DE-WBCs are, by nature, complex multi-partner efforts that depend on shared planning, open communication, and flexibility. Key commitments include:
In Tennessee, we found that MOUs played a helpful role in formalizing these commitments and clarifying responsibilities across institutions. By clearly outlining expectations such as shared grading processes, timelines for communication, and roles in student support, MOUs support alignment and accountability. When partners build trust, stay responsive to one another’s needs, and maintain a shared focus on student success, DE-WBCs can offer a powerful, equity-driven model that prepares students for both college and career.
Get the MOU template.
Many states have accountability measures for school districts for the number of students completing dual enrollment or similar coursework and the number of students participating in work-based learning experiences. However, most states also have separate standards and policies for dual enrollment courses and work-based learning experiences, which means that students must be enrolled in these courses separately.
This was the case for Tennessee prior to the dual enrollment work-based course model. As grantees started to implement DE-WBCs, they raised the issue that students enrolled in these courses were participating in both experiences, but they were not getting the credit in the accountability system for both—just one for dual enrollment. Some grantees were even adding a work-based learning course to student schedules to ensure they received appropriate credit, but this was not possible for all students in DE-WBCs. This led to extensive discussions with contacts in the Tennessee Department of Education’s (TDOE) division of Postsecondary, Workforce, CTE, and Military Readiness (PWCMR), which oversees both dual enrollment and work-based learning at the state level and their associated course codes. After connecting grantees with these contacts to describe their issues with course codes and brainstorming solutions, our contacts in the PWCMR division worked with TDOE’s accountability team to create a specialized set of course codes for DE-WBCs. Grantees are now getting credit for students in DE-WBCs participating in both dual enrollment and work-based learning. TDOE is planning to continue the use of these course codes and is exploring the possibility of expanding them to all CTE programs of study in Tennessee.
A core feature of the dual enrollment work-based course (DE-WBC) model is having students spend 80% of their time in the classroom and 20% at a worksite, with the goal of employer involvement in instruction and grading. While this model offers significant learning potential, integrating employer input into grading proved to be one of the most challenging aspects of the model. Institutional policies around grading, syllabus change processes, and instructor qualifications created barriers, and many employers were unfamiliar or uncomfortable with assigning formal grades to students.
To overcome these challenges, grantees worked closely with employer partners to co-design workplace learning activities aligned with course competencies that felt manageable within the job site context. Instead of asking employers to assign letter or numerical grades, partners collaboratively developed custom rubrics to evaluate students’ technical and professional skills. This approach allowed employers to offer structured, meaningful feedback without the burden of issuing formal grades. Instructors then used these rubrics to translate employer input into a final course grade by substituting an existing assignment or amending the syllabus to accommodate the workplace component.
To explore how programs implemented these strategies in practice, check out the impact stories on custom rubrics and syllabus amendments.
Welcome to the Work-Based Learning Framework. This guide provides everything you need to know about work-based learning and how to use it to drive success for workers, learners, and employers. Work-based learning supports people of…
Through the Tennessee SySTEM grant, Tennessee high schools planned and executed STEM/Computer Science based dual enrollment work-based courses, courses that combine dual enrollment credit and work-based learning through an employer partner. These tools were used…
Lesson 1: Flexible systems and policies allow for course innovation Case highlight: In Tennessee, schools report on and are held accountable for student participation in both dual enrollment courses and WBL opportunities, but currently courses…
