Early college not just for elite: Dual enrollment grows to inspire a wider variety of high schoolers.

Byline: Kristen A. Graham, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Dec. 23--Across the region and around the country, more and more high schoolers are filling the nation's college classrooms.

They are teens like Daiva Feinbaum, 15, a super-focused whiz in Cherry Hill who is doubling up 10th grade and courses at Camden County College, with plans to finish an associate degree before she receives her high school diploma.

But increasingly, they are also students like Rachel Hatton, who as a sophomore at Conestoga High School in Berwyn didn't feel like getting out of bed in the morning, amassed 40 absences, and was in danger of flunking out.

Now Hatton is about to join the swelling ranks of American teenagers earning college credit in high school.

"I want to be a nurse. I signed up for college general psychology in January," said Hatton, 17, a junior at Chester County Middle College High School. "That gives me passion."

In 2003, 75 of 151 high schools in the area, or half, offered dual enrollment. By 2005, that had jumped to two-thirds, or 112 of 168, according to The Inquirer's Report Card on the Schools.

Encouraging college courses is one of the ways educators are trying to reinvent…