With ever larger numbers of students coming to campus, there is an urgent need for both national and local dialogue about how to educate them effectively. We invite you to use it as a point of deparature for candid discussions with faculty members, administrators, trustees, students, alumni, and other core constituents. Seventy percent actually do enroll in some form of postsecondary education within two years of graduating from high school. The college enrollment of adults aged twenty-five and above has increased to 42 percent of full time matriculants, up from 22 percent two decades ago. Through tax policies and scholarship programs, the federal government and many states have made at least two years of postsecondary enrollment almost universally accessible.
Most campuses admit all qualified applicants.
Public two year colleges, which enroll 37 percent of all college students, must accept in some credit program or non-credit program leading to matriculation, any high school graduate who applies. Many institutions, particularly urban ones, enroll large numbers of students for whom English is a second language in which they have not yet achieved sufficient fluency to engage in college level writing. Fully one-third of those who attend college take some form of courses considered remedial by their institution. At the turn of the century when about 4 percent of high school graduates attended college, or in the 1950s when 20 percent or so of high school graduates went on, college was a place for a selected few, mostly from higher socioeconomic groups, who were prepared to pursue a certain kind of education conducted in a manner quite distinct from that of high school. Now virtually all high school graduates may enroll in college, and the great majority now do.