College Now Program: Successful Transition for Moderate Achievers

Abstract

Collaborative programs between high schools and colleges are not new to the educational scene. They've been tried in America for the last one hundred years, with Robert M. Hutchins' idea of early admissions and advanced placement (AP), pioneered at the University of Chicago in 1936, as the most notable. Last year more than two hundred thousand students in 31 percent of our nation's high schools participated in the AP program (Roth man 1986). What is new about collaboratives, ac cording to a survey of 260 institutions by Janet Lieberman (1985) of LaGuardia Community College, is their prolifera tion in the last decade. Schools and col leges are joining together to find solu tions to four key problems plaguing educators at both levels: improving student performance; increasing reten tion; encouraging students, especially the culturally and economically disad vantaged, to pursue postsecondary educational opportunities; and pre venting faculty burn-out (Boyer 1986, Perlez 1986, Sim 1986b, Smothers 1986, Sirotnik, 1988). In 1984, Kingsborough Community College, a branch of the City Univer