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Bridging Barriers to Success

Even though 70 percent of American high school grads go to college within two years, many arrive on campus unaware of basic expectations and toting a backpack of misconceptions.

Many high school students think getting into college is the hardest part of their academic work or that taking easy high school classes and receiving good grades is better preparation for college than taking more rigorous academic classes. Why the confusion?

Students and families receive conflicting information from high schools and colleges, according to “Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K–12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations,” a six-year national study conducted by Stanford University’s The Bridge Project.

"We think these students are set up to fail,” says Michael Kirst, a Stanford professor of education and principal investigator. “They graduate high school and enter the dark continent of educational testing. Of the 49 states that have K–12 standards, not one conferred with public higher education systems as to how they should be teaching the students.”

The Bridge Project labels the current educational system “fractured” and believes states have created unnecessary barriers for students entering college. Researchers found African-American and Latino students at a greater disadvantage because they are not graduating with the same level of skills as their white non-Latino counterparts.

Approximately half the students entering college had to take remedial courses. “We expected to find some disjuncture,” says Kirst, “but the unpreparedness at the community college level was worse than we expected.”

Kirst feels that the focus of the media and high school counseling and outreach programs on selective institutions promotes misconceptions and that media, policy, and research should pay more attention to the kinds of colleges the majority of students attend.

Further recommendations for improvement include allowing students to take placement exams in high school, so they can better understand college-level expectations; sequencing undergraduate general education requirements so they are linked with appropriate senior year high school courses; and expanding successful concurrent enrollment programs between high schools and colleges so they don’t just include traditional college-bound students.

The full Bridge Project report is online at www.stanford.edu/group/bridgeproject.