There is substantial evidence that high school students who take college-level courses realize substantial benefits in terms of their college access and attainment. However, differential access to these programs, in general, and to programs with different characteristics, appear to reinforce systemic socioeconomic and racial inequities. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students, and lower-income students in general, are most likely to have access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses or dual-enrollment courses taught by high school teachers with minimal training and support. With some important exceptions, highly trained faculty at selective, well-resourced colleges have offered courses to high school students through expensive summer schools accessible only to the wealthy, or through fully online, asynchronous massive open online courses (MOOCs) with limited instructor interaction and very low completion rates.
This chapter focuses on an emerging category of advanced coursework intended to break this mold. We offer case studies of three programs that engage faculty at highly selective institutions in offering online or hybrid format courses to secondary school students with the explicit goal of expanding equitable access to higher education. Davidson Next, which was in existence from 2014 to 2022, engaged Davidson College faculty to design supplementary, online modules that can be used to support the teaching of AP courses and for individual self-guided instruction. OnRamps is a dual enrollment and professional development program created by the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) that offers college-level courses to Texas high school students in a hybrid format co-taught by UT Austin (and, more recently, other college) faculty and local high school teachers. The National Education Equity Lab is a not-for-profit that partners with selective universities to offer hybrid college credit-bearing courses to students at Title 1 high schools across the country.
We selected these three examples because they illustrate variations on the theme. Each has a different type of “host” organization—a private liberal arts college, a public research university, and a not-for-profit organization. Each takes a different curricular approach—a modular supplement to AP courses, a small set of core introductory courses, and a growing set of popular courses that stoke intellectual curiosity. The projects are also at different stages of development, with Davidson Next sunsetting in 2022, OnRamps running at full maturity, and the National Ed Equity Lab still starting up and expanding.
Comparing these cases elucidates the varying motivations of the providing institutions and their leaders. These ranged from searching for a meaningful societal problem to address with a technology (Davidson Next) to responding to a larger statewide requirement in dual enrollment (OnRamps), to building equitable pathways for admission to selective colleges (the Lab). The case studies draw out the features and strategies that drive or constrain success, such as the finances, institutional capacity, technology, student mindset, and networks. Although each case played out differently, they are alike in centering learning in their efforts to improve college access for historically underserved high school students. This model of outreach and access, scaled through technology and grounded in learning and equity, is particularly important in the current moment given recent litigation in the Supreme Court around the prevailing system of affirmative action.
Davidson Next
Davidson Next was a Davidson College initiative that aimed to supplement AP instruction with online modules designed for in-class hybrid instruction and for individual self-guided instruction. Starting in 2014, Davidson Next offered six courses that covered the most challenging concepts in AP Physics, AP Calculus, and AP Macroeconomics on edX. Students could take the courses on their own through edX or their teacher could use a private version of the course as materials for their local class via school district partnerships. Due to partnership challenges, funding concerns, and shifts in strategy, Davidson Next was sunsetted in 2022, although all videos remain available on YouTube.
Davidson Next began when Davidson joined the edX consortium and sought to make a unique educational contribution to that platform. Davidson focused on AP students and teachers as its primary audience because four faculty members had leadership roles with College Board’s AP program and understood where students need additional support. The Arnold Foundation (now known as Arnold Ventures) provided grant funding of $2 million to support the initiative, most of which was spent on “hacking edX” to make the platform work for Davidson’s use case. Davidson Next was in many ways a technology-driven project—a platform in search of a problem to be solved. And the problem had to fit within Davidson’s mission. As Carol Quillen, Davidson college president, explains:
Davidson, for all of its exclusionary history, has had since its founding, this idea that a free and democratic society needs educated citizens. . . . Even the largest of colleges still only serve a limited number of students. So we need to think beyond the students we directly serve and think about what else [we can] do to build the postsecondary landscape that serves all. For Davidson, it is about building stronger pipelines to higher ed. . . . We can reach teachers and honor the work that they do. We are a tiny institution and Davidson Next does not replace teachers but it helps teachers with a dramatic expansion of access for students.
With Davidson Next, Davidson entered into the digital learning space with exploratory goals. There wasn’t a larger strategy around digital access. The question being asked in 2014 was “can we do this? And can we do this well?” Between 2017 and 2021, Davidson Next attracted 104,366 edX enrollments and 481 classrooms with private MOOC instances run by teachers. But the impact went beyond strictly numerical terms: Davidson President Carol Quillen says it demonstrated what can happen when an institution with a particular expertise looks around and says, “what can we do with this to share it as broadly as possible?”
The project struggled with financial sustainability. There was a desire to move beyond the grant-funded pilot, but contradictory concerns about charging for access. On the basis of this experience, Julie Goff, former director of Davidson Next, reflects that philanthropy may not be best suited to funding pilot projects because this reduces the obligation to plan for sustainable operations using institutional resources.
Davidson Next differs from the other initiatives examined in this chapter in its dependence on external partnerships. These presented the greatest challenges for the project team of three staff members. Davidson approached the College Board about collaborating, and although College Board agreed to list the program on their website, they did not partner on content development or marketing. Another sticking point was Davidson’s decision to focus on challenging concepts versus the Arnold Foundation’s desire for more comprehensive content coverage. Davidson faculty were concerned about diminishing the role of teachers by providing all of the content in a standalone course. As a compromise, Davidson Next used Open edX, the open-source version of the edX platform, to allow high school teachers to access the Davidson content and adapt it for their students, while retaining local control of grading. Goff explained that “we were hacking a MOOC platform for blended learning which it was not designed to do—especially in 2015.” The content was lauded by teachers and students, but there was frustration with the technology and how to make it work in the context of a classroom.
Although the program did not survive at Davidson as the college’s digital strategy shifted away from kindergarten to grade 12 (K–12) pathways, its influence extended beyond the campus: College Board and edX have both launched AP-related courses and preparatory materials in recent years. In the end, Davidson Next piloted a new concept in digital learning and served as an experiment in how a liberal arts college can scale its reach to achieve access goals.
OnRamps
OnRamps is a dual-enrollment and professional development program offered by the University of Texas at Austin, providing 16 courses to 154,491 students and professional development to 1,200 teachers across Texas as of 2022. The program was created in 2011, following a legislative requirement that every Texas high school student be offered the opportunity to take at least 12 hours of college credit. In anticipation of a significant increase in demand for dual-credit options, the founders of OnRamps sought to provide consistent course quality and impactful teacher training that could scale to meet the demand. More fundamentally, OnRamps aimed to increase the number and diversity of students who engage authentically with the academic expectations of leading research universities. This differentiated the program from other dual-credit opportunities in Texas, which were offered mostly by community colleges. As Jennifer Porter, managing director of OnRamps, describes, “OnRamps’s goals are to close the gap of understanding between colleges’ expectations and student’s ability to meet them at an individual and systems level before students’ first semester of college.”
OnRamps is structured as a hybrid program where students are enrolled in a course taught by their high school teachers for high school credit as well as a remote course taught by a University Instructor of Record. Students work between two Canvas courses, one managed by their high school teacher and another managed by the University. Content is woven between the two instances, with students studying college-level content in one instance and completing a high school-level comprehension check in another. In this way, college-level expectations are clear, and students have guided high school-level support on how to reach them. Students watch pre-recorded lectures from Instructors of Record, participate in discussions facilitated by their local teachers, and complete college-level assignments. They receive two grades for the two classes. This design is intended to maintain academic rigor while reducing the risk that a student who struggles in the university-level portion of the course puts their high school success at risk. Overall, 92% of eligible students who enrolled in OnRamps in the 2020–2021 academic year earned college credit.
A distinctive feature of OnRamps is extensive teacher professional development. First-year OnRamps teachers must apply to participate and are required to attend a two-week summer teaching institute; returning teachers attend a truncated summer institute. New OnRamps teachers receive a minimum of 80 hours of professional development and coaching, and returning teachers receive a minimum of 35 hours per year. Teachers receive coaching support throughout the year and are recognized as teacher affiliates of UT Austin. The goal is to help teachers build a culture that brings together pedagogical understanding, technology skills and tools, and college expectations.
OnRamps has achieved significant scale within Texas, offering 16 unique courses to 154,491 students in 196 districts. All courses offered correlate to core credit and transferability within the Texas Common Core Numbering system. Course design starts with determining the assessment methodology and making sure it can scale. (That requirement means there are no seminar-style writing intensive courses offered.) Each class is designed so it can scale up to 6,000–8,000 students. Funded through state appropriations, OnRamps has approximately 70 full-time staff as well as part-time staff who help with grading. In terms of impact, a 2018 white paper reported, “OnRamps participants were . . . nearly twice as likely to attend a four-year college compared to non-OnRamps students (52.3% vs. 29.9%), and roughly two-thirds of OnRamps credit eligible students attended a four-year college (66.9%).” With this level of success, the plan is to continue to grow the program within Texas through partnerships with such regional institutions as Tarleton State, and possibly later to grow to other states.
OnRamps’s theory of change is that educators are the most critical contributors; content and technology are enablers, but not the drivers. According to Harrison Keller, one of the founders of OnRamps, “OnRamps’ secret sauce is building a facilitated network of educators as committed professionals grounded in mutual respect. In many ways, it’s not about the credit or about acceleration, it’s about increasing the likelihood that students are ready for the next thing.” OnRamps is a successful example of a statewide investment in dual enrollment with the aim of increasing universal college readiness. With a design built for scale and an investment in teacher professional development, OnRamps aims to serve the college preparatory needs of all students.
The National Education Equity Lab
The National Education Equity Lab (the Lab) partners with selective universities to provide hybrid college credit-bearing courses to Title 1 high schools. Its goal is to reduce “undermatching” by helping students build knowledge and skills and prove to themselves and colleges that they are college ready. Classes are taught within schools, during the school day, by a hybrid teaching team consisting of a local high school teacher, a remote Teaching Fellow from the university, and a faculty member who creates content and assessments and serves as Instructor of Record. The Lab currently works with 12 universities to offer 23 discrete courses, ranging from poetry to computer science, to over 298 Title 1 high schools from 112 districts. High schools select the students who participate based on the Lab’s criteria, including prior coursework, grades, or teacher recommendations. The Lab also works with each student to provide a laptop and Wi-Fi access if needed, and through partners, helps them navigate college and financial aid applications.
The Lab requires a commitment to equity from the leadership of all of its university and district partners. It has some requirements that maintain a similar structure across the courses but leaves the level of commitment up to the university partner. This can range from a team of 10 staff supporting courses (Stanford) to smaller teams supporting faculty and Teaching Fellows. The Lab seeks to reach the highest performing students from low-income and underrepresented minority backgrounds, at the lowest performing schools. Classes are free for students but cost school districts approximately $250 per student per course, which most districts cover using state or philanthropic funds. This fee is split between the Lab and the providing college or university. (The Lab is funded through a combination of district fees and philanthropic support).
In selecting college and university partners, the Lab seeks institutions whose course credits will transfer widely. To the Lab, this means selective colleges. This criterion also helps with the Lab’s larger goal around changing mindsets, according to Alexandra Slack, chief operating officer, “selective colleges are important in confidence building for students to know that they are capable of college level work with known institutions.” High schools partner with the Lab because the courses are designed to be embedded in the school day; expose their students to advanced education; and, there are typically multiple assessments, which is closer to the college model than AP, in which credits are based on performance on a single end-of-course exam.
Beyond the academics, the Lab also strives to support a college-going mindset among students. The Lab celebrates students’ achievements with ceremonies at the start, midpoint, and end of each course and inculcates the idea that the course, for students, is part of something larger. Staff reach out to struggling students with coaching to help them get back on track. The model can be described as college-level learning with high school-level support. To date, the Lab has enrolled 11,000 students in 29 states, with the goal being to scale as large as there is a need. Across the Lab’s courses, on average 15% of students drop soon after enrollment; an additional 10–15% of students drop during the course; and among the students who remain, approximately 85% of students who complete the course earn college credit with passing grades. Reasons for students’ dropping range from the challenging nature of the material to external pressures from work.
The Lab’s theory of change is to “connect the dots” between high achieving students and colleges. The founder and CEO, Leslie Cornfeld, describes the courses as a “Trojan horse” to build a college-going mindset and help students get the support they need to apply and succeed in college. The Lab’s approach relies on partnerships with recognized institutions, Title 1 high schools and districts, and philanthropic and university resources to support students. Still in its early stages, the Lab is working on finding a sustainable financial model that relies less on philanthropic grants. And by relying on asynchronous delivery, courses can scale at the relatively modest marginal costs of additional Teaching Fellows, who are typically staffed at a 1:15 ratio to students.
Conclusion
Higher education access is in flux. Many colleges have institutionalized test-optional admissions policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Affirmative action admissions policies are being challenged at the highest levels of the judicial system. To build diverse, talented student bodies in the future, colleges must innovate. The programs profiled in this chapter offer three models to consider. But in their commonalities, they collectively represent a shift in approach. Davidson Next, OnRamps, and the Lab each use digital learning to engage students and build more equitable pathways to college. This has three benefits that cut across all these programs: enhancing the students’ college readiness, equipping students with a signal of their college readiness, and bolstering their confidence. This approach represents an important change from “discovering” prospective students through their accumulation of traditional markers of accomplishment to intentionally offering college-level learning experiences to broaden opportunity and mobility.
These case studies offer lessons for equity-driven, learning-centered access programs. First, it is critical to have a sustainable financial model. While all three programs rely on external funding, establishing sources of recurring revenue—from organizations, not directly from students—has been essential to both OnRamps’ and the Lab’s success. By contrast, Davidson Next was unable to overcome its perception as a source of free content. Second, there must be a clear connection between the program and the strategy of its providers. In the case of both OnRamps and the Lab, institutions are offering their own courses to a broader population of students, training K–12 partner teachers, and validating their quality, in support of public interest missions as well as their own enrollment goals. Although Davidson Next shared some of these features, supporting AP courses was not seen as core by Davidson. Third, networks are necessary to expand impact beyond just content delivery. Davidson Next relied heavily on local teachers to meld the AP content into their classrooms to support their students. OnRamps has invested in teacher professional development to enhance teachers’ ability to build college readiness skills that go beyond content absorption. OnRamps has also built a network of partnerships within Texas. The National Education Equity Lab has used a network of partnerships with colleges and universities to scale quickly. Each college is able to reach a maximum number of students with their course while being a part of a larger consortial effort. Network-building also mitigates a tension at the core of this work: the institutions offering these programs are not currently positioned to enroll all the students who participate in them on their own. Engaging multiple institutions with a shared confidence in the meaningfulness of the students’ success expands their enrollment options. To fully realize this potential, participating institutions’ admissions offices likely need to be more involved in these programs than they are today.
The United States’ diverse K–12 population needs more equitable pathways to college, and higher education must reimagine how it uses its human capital, technology, trust, and networks to blaze them. These case studies demonstrate the possibilities, as well as some of the risks associated with those new pathways. To build the classes of the future, colleges and universities should continue to innovate in access and reach “upstream” into the K–12 system to prepare students for success.