Opinion: “Why Should a College Education Start at Age 18, and Only After High School?” Ask Dumaine Williams and Stephen Tremaine, Vice Presidents of Bard Early Colleges

In an opinion piece for The 74, Vice President and Dean of Early Colleges Dumaine Williams and Vice President for Early College Policies and Programs and Executive Director of Bard Early College in New Orleans Stephen Tremaine challenge the conventional “who” and “when” of a college education. They ask: Why should college start at age 18 and only after high school? “This is the core question that led to the founding of Bard Early College 20 years ago. To answer it, we decided to test a radically new idea: building a tuition-free branch of a college inside an urban school system and opening the doors to students who hadn’t yet finished high school. We were guided by two core beliefs: that young teenagers all over the country are intellectually and socially ready for genuine college study and that, by using public school systems as a point of access, we can ensure that the path from high school to college is, to the greatest extent possible, clear of obstacles,” they write.

Post Date: 04-04-2022