The Early College
The Bard High School Early College was born in 2001, right here at BHSEC Manhattan, as the first in a new take on public high school.
Simon’s Rock College of Bard was the first residential early college designed for undergrad admissions after 10th or 11th grade. Akin to the village schools of the early twentieth century, students would graduate based on their mastery of the course work versus their age.
Bard College President Dr. Leon Botstein built on the Simon’s Rock model with an eye to equity and access, partnering with the New York City Department of Education to offer a concurrent high school diploma and an AA degree from Bard, completely free of charge. It works because of our incredibly dedicated faculty of high school teachers and college professors. The Bard Early College network is growing and thriving, with four campuses in NYC alone, and more than 3300 students in nine cities across the US!
Learn more from Bard Early College founding principal, Ray Peterson.
The Beginning
The founding principle of Early College presumes that high schoolers can thrive on an inquiry-focused curriculum, and that such studies are appropriate well prior to consideration of training for future employment. The idea is that students can learn to wrap their minds around the exercise of critical thinking before deciding on a career, and that this work is best done before tuition must be paid to begin an undergraduate degree.
What happens when public school kids dispense with the redundancy and rote learning traditionally associated with academic rigor, to find validation and an expanded worldview from the insights and alternate viewpoints of their classmates through guided discussion?
Learn more from Bard Early College and Simon’s Rock Dean, Pat Sharpe.
