Dual Enrollment Credits That Actually Transfer

Nearly 40% of adults have tried to transfer college credit, and 58% of them lost credits somewhere along the way. Worse, one in five had to retake classes they’d already passed. Those numbers aren’t a side note—they’re the warning label for dual enrollment.

Dual enrollment is supposed to be the practical option: earn college credit in high school, cut costs, and build momentum toward a degree or a job. But when standards don’t line up and credentials can’t be verified or understood across systems, students end up with “credits” that function more like suggestions.

This post sits squarely in our Education, Skills, and Workforce Development series because credit transfer isn’t just an academic paperwork problem. It’s a workforce problem. When learning isn’t portable, people repeat training, burn time, and delay entry into skilled jobs—exactly when employers are struggling to fill roles.

Dual enrollment only works if the credit is portable

Dual enrollment creates value when a student’s learning is recognized outside the building where it happened. If a course counts only at one college (or only under one advisor’s interpretation), it isn’t a pathway—it’s a gamble.

Here’s why portability matters:

• Families are trying to manage education costs and avoid extra semesters.
• Schools are trying to expand college and career readiness, especially in career and technical education (CTE).
• Employers want clearer signals that a candidate can do the work, not just that they sat in a class.

Dual enrollment is growing fast, and evidence consistently shows that students who earn meaningful college credit in high school tend to have stronger persistence and completion outcomes than peers who don’t. The problem is that “meaningful” often depends on whether credits transfer cleanly.

When credits don’t transfer, students:

1. Lose time (retaking courses)
2. Lose money (extra tuition and fees)
3. Lose confidence (feeling misled or behind)
4. Lose momentum (dropping out becomes more likely)

And yes—districts and states lose trust. Once a family hears “those credits might not count,” participation becomes a harder sell.

Why credits fail to transfer (and why it’s so common)

Credit transfer breaks for a simple reason: institutions can’t reliably see what the student actually learned.

A course title like “ENG 101” or “Intro to Business” doesn’t tell a receiving college much. Two classes can share a name and still differ in:

• learning objectives
• assessment rigor
• contact hours
• lab or clinical requirements
• alignment to state or industry standards

The receiving institution is then forced into a manual, judgment-heavy process: syllabi reviews, department approvals, back-and-forth emails, and “this is close enough” decisions. That’s not scalable. It’s also not fair. Students with more support (time, parents who know how to push, counselors with bandwidth) do better.

The Public Agenda survey data from 2025 shows how widespread the damage is: 65% of transfer students reported at least one negative experience. That includes losing credits, delays, and retaking classes.

A stance worth taking: If a dual enrollment program can’t demonstrate transfer outcomes, it shouldn’t market itself as cost-saving. Savings only exist when credits count.

Standards alignment is the hidden infrastructure of workforce readiness

When people hear “standards,” they think compliance. I think infrastructure—the roads and bridges that let learners move.

Standards alignment means a dual enrollment course is connected to:

• K–12 academic standards (what a student is expected to learn)
• college course outcomes (what a credit is supposed to represent)
• workforce competencies (what employers need someone to do)

When those elements are mapped in a transparent way, three things become easier:

1. Credit transfer decisions become faster and more consistent.
2. Advising improves because pathways can be planned with fewer surprises.
3. Employer confidence rises because skills are described in recognizable terms.

The practical difference between “seat time” and “skills”

Dual enrollment has historically been credit-first: finish the class, get the credit hours. But the labor market is increasingly skills-first: prove you can write clearly, analyze data, follow safety protocols, troubleshoot systems, collaborate.

A standards-aligned approach bridges that gap by making credits evidence-bearing—not just transcript entries.

A clean way to say it:

A transferable credit is a credit with receipts.

Verifiable credentials: making learning legible across systems

Standards help define learning; credentials help communicate it. The newer push is toward verifiable digital credentials—records that are standardized, portable, and trusted.

Two concepts matter here:

• Machine-readable standards: outcomes described in a structured format that systems can share.
• Verifiable credentials / learner records: achievements packaged in a consistent digital record, tied to evidence and competencies.

This isn’t about flashy badges. It’s about reducing ambiguity so a registrar, an advisor, or an employer can quickly understand:

• what the learner completed
• what competencies were demonstrated
• how performance was assessed

What “interoperability” looks like in real life

Interoperability is a big word for a practical need: your learning should travel with you.

In dual enrollment, that might mean:

• a high school course outcome map can be compared directly to a college course requirement
• a student’s credential can be imported into a college’s system without manual re-entry
• an employer can review a candidate’s competencies without guessing what “Advanced Manufacturing II” covered

When that happens, dual enrollment stops being a patchwork of local agreements and becomes a scalable workforce development pipeline.

A concrete example: Georgia’s push for clarity

Georgia offers a useful model for what standards modernization can look like.

The state created SuitCASE, a digital platform for managing and distributing K–12 learning standards using a machine-readable standard called CASE (Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange). The important part isn’t the platform name—it’s the method:

• standards are structured so different systems can read them
• the format is shareable, not trapped in PDFs
• K–12 outcomes can be aligned to higher education and workforce expectations

This kind of structure makes curriculum “auditable” in a good way. When a dual enrollment course claims alignment, it can actually be checked.

A smart next step (and one I strongly agree with): higher education curricula should publish in comparable structured formats, so alignment isn’t one-directional. If only K–12 does the work, transfer remains political.

Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs): the bridge from school to job

Transcripts are fine for listing courses. They’re terrible at describing what a student can do.

That’s where Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs) come in: a standardized way to capture both academic and co-curricular learning—leadership roles, projects, internships, clinical hours, competencies.

The University of Georgia’s approach—providing students with a CLR—highlights the real opportunity: connect learning to skills in a format others can trust.

For workforce development, CLRs can reduce friction at three transition points:

• high school → college (dual enrollment credit evaluation)
• college → transfer institution (mobility)
• education → employment (skills signaling)

Here’s what I’ve found working with training and credential programs: the strongest outcomes come when advisors and employers can see the same skills language. CLRs make that much more realistic.

How to make every dual enrollment credit count: a practical checklist

Dual enrollment leaders don’t need another inspirational poster. They need operating decisions that reduce credit loss.

For districts and high schools

1. Publish course outcomes clearly (not just course descriptions). Outcomes should be specific and assessable.
2. Ask partners for transfer history: “What percentage of these credits are accepted at your most common transfer destinations?”
3. Prioritize pathway courses: courses that map directly into degree plans or industry credential sequences.
4. Build student documentation habits: encourage learners to save syllabi, major projects, and competency evidence.

For colleges and dual enrollment partners

1. Create a default equivalency map and update it annually (don’t force case-by-case reviews).
2. Separate quality from gatekeeping: if rigor is the concern, define the evidence needed to approve credit—then publish it.
3. Align CTE dual enrollment with industry-recognized competencies where possible (especially in healthcare, IT, advanced manufacturing, logistics).

For state leaders and workforce boards

1. Measure the right outcome: not just participation, but credits accepted and applied.
2. Fund interoperability work as core infrastructure, not a pilot that dies in 18 months.
3. Bring employers into standards conversations so pathways reflect real hiring needs.

A snippet-worthy truth:

Access without alignment creates debt, not opportunity.

What this means for 2026 planning (and why timing matters)

December is when schools and colleges are budgeting, renegotiating agreements, and setting next year’s program targets. It’s also when families start asking what spring and summer options look like.

If dual enrollment is part of your 2026 workforce development strategy, treat standards and credentials like the foundation, not decoration. The goal isn’t “more dual enrollment.” The goal is more dual enrollment that leads somewhere—a degree pathway, an apprenticeship, a credential stack, a job.

Students are already doing the work. The system should stop making them prove it again.

If you’re building or improving a dual enrollment program, start with one question: Can a student take these credits to a different college—or to an employer—and have them understood the same way? If the answer is “it depends,” that’s your first fix.