The Challenge of Summer Bridge Programs

Given the number of students who enter postsecondary education not ready for college, many universities have instituted summer bridge programs to better transition students to their freshman year. These programs occur during the summer before a student’s freshman year and are considered a bridge from high school to college. Yet despite the prevalence of these interventions across postsecondary institutions—community colleges and 4 years, public and private—few empirical studies exist evaluating these programs. The objectives of this article are to (a) provide a characterization of the breadth of summer bridge programs, (b) review the extant literature on summer bridge programs, and (c) discuss implications of these reviews for the future of summer bridge programs.