What Happens When You Combine High School and College? The Impact of Early Colleges on Postsecondary Performance and Completion

Early colleges are an innovative model of schooling that combines high school and college. A 14-year, rigorous experimental study has been examining whether this model works. The study compares early college students who were accepted through a lottery to students who applied to early colleges but were not accepted through the lottery (the control group). This brief gives an overview of the early college model as implemented in North Carolina, the study's design, and the model's impacts on student outcomes. [This brief is based on the following peer-reviewed article: Edmunds, J.A., Unlu, F., Furey, J., Glennie, E., & Arshavsky, N. (2020) What happens when you combine high school and college? The impact of the early college model on postsecondary performance and completion. "Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis" (EJ1253291).]