Bard College at Simon’s Rock alumnus John McWhorter SR ’83 calls the Bard High School Early Colleges in Manhattan and Queens “sterling examples” of a tuition-free early college model in an opinion piece for The New York Times, entitled “Early College Is the Equalizer We Need“. He cites the high college graduation rates of Bard Early College students to support the belief that early college is “an equalizing tool for teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds.”