Locally, the line between high school and college is becoming increasingly blurred.

Northwestern Michigan College (NMC)'s fall enrollment includes a whopping 544 local high school students participating in dual enrollment or early college programs. That represents a 13 percent increase versus fall 2024, and accounts for some 16 percent of NMC’s student body. But what’s driving the growth, and what does it mean for northern Michigan’s biggest public school district? 

Partnerships with local high schools aren’t new at NMC. According to Admissions Director Lisa vonReichbauer, the college “started doing dual enrollment in the mid-to-late ‘90s, shortly after the law for dual enrollment was established in Michigan.” That law opened the door for districts like Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) to use some of their state funding to pay for eligible students to take college classes. Dual enrollment is available to students as early as their sophomore year, and allows them to take up to 10 classes and choose from more than 100 courses.

In 2014, NMC and TCAPS inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to create an “early college” pathway. Students can start early college during their sophomore year and “make a commitment to do an extra year of high school,” according to TCAPS Chief Academic Officer Jessie Houghton. Those students then take a mix of high school and college courses en route to earning both their high school diploma and (ideally) an associate’s degree at the end of their extra year.

“[The early college structure] allows us to use our school aid to pay for that last year of college courses for the student,” Houghton tells The Ticker.

For years, dual enrollment and early college were fringe options utilized by a small minority of students. A principal at Central High School for eight years before taking on her current role, Houghton estimates the district was “maybe scratching 10 percent of our kids” dual enrolling a decade ago.

The early college pathway was even less well-trodden. “When we signed that MOU with NMC in 2014, we probably started with about 12 kids,” Houghton notes.

Things have changed dramatically. This semester, Houghton says about 25 percent of TCAPS seniors are “engaging in some type of dual enrollment at NMC.” The early college program has skyrocketed to 114 students.

Why the growth? Houghton says one factor is that TCAPS has simply gotten better at advertising the options. Students who wish to study something not on offer at their local high school know they can check the NMC course catalog. As for early college, Houghton says TCAPS has gotten especially used to pitching that option to prospective first-generation college students or those interested in entering the workforce as soon as possible.

On the NMC side, vonReichbauer's team has redoubled its efforts since the pandemic “to make strong connections with our high school partners.”

“We’re making lots of visits to the high schools and providing support to help students learn about dual enrollment,” she explains. “That includes helping them apply, helping them get through all the approval processes, and helping them get through registration.”

“There is also just a big push at the state level to expand accessibility to dual enrollment, and to have more students participate in these opportunities,” vonReichbauer adds. “So, we're really working very hard to expand the scope of it here, and to provide these options to as many students as we can.”

Case-in-point was a move last year to implement a new dual enrollment tuition rate for out-of-district students.

“What the state allots for schools to spend on dual enrollment, our out-of-district tuition rate exceeded that allotment. So, either the school had to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for it, or they had to pass that cost on to students and families,” vonReichbauer explains. “[The new out-of-district rate] is still higher than the in-district rate, so there's still a benefit for being a Grand Traverse County resident who supports NMC through the property taxes, but the rate is low enough that it fits in with what the state allots a school to pay for dual enrollment.”

While Houghton sees the TCAPS/NMC partnership as very positive for students, she wonders what the future might look like now that Michigan has rolled out the Community College Guarantee, which enables recent high school grads to have most of their community college expenses covered by the state.

“Up to now, a big part of the appeal to dual enrollment and early college has been: ‘You can get all these courses now, at no cost to your family,’” Houghton says. “Well, now our students who are in Grand Traverse County, after they graduate from TCAPS, they can take all those classes at NMC for free, thanks to the Community College Guarantee. So, it will be interesting in the next few years to see whether there is as much motivation for families and students to take college classes in high school.”

If there is a change, it could have a significant impact on TCAPS’ bottom line.

“Right now, TCAPS is a pretty big customer for NMC,” Houghton says. “Our dual enrollment bill is well north of half a million dollars, in terms of the credit hours kids are taking.”