Recent legislative decisions in at least some states have removed the remedial function from the state university and placed it directly at the doorstep of the community college. Such decisions appear to have been made largely for reasons of parsimony or the mere presumption of the effectiveness with which two-year colleges address the needs of high-risk students. However, there are few empirical indicators of the differential effectiveness with which the two- and four-year collegiate sectors are helping high-risk students to attain their goals. Therefore, this study was designed to provide an empirical grounding for the aforementioned policy issue by determining how selected pairs of two- and four-year colleges are contributing to the progress of high-risk students. Multiple methods were used to address the issues central to this investigation.

An assessment of the effect of remedial programs and other institutional variables on the progress of underprepared students across chosen two- and four-year collegiate sectors in a two-state region of rural Appalachia was performed. Moreover, the impact of residence status on students' progress was considered. Further, the effect of the remedial approaches at separate two- and four-year institutions on the progress of high risk students was assessed, and a comparison was made of the program orientations preferred by the leaders of participant institutions.

The findings indicated that the redemptive practices at selected two-year colleges were generally more effective than those employed by participant four-year institutions, thus offering hope that recent trends to assign the remedial function to community colleges may be justified by the more effective delivery of services. The advantage accorded the remedial programs in the two-year sector was not primarily a result of differences in remedial approach but largely a function of the relationship between remedial practices and other institutional variables. Residence status had little effect on the educational progress of high-risk students. A tendency was observed among selected two- and four-year sectors to devalue the affective dimensions of development that were integral with more recent program designs and return to earlier conceptions of basic skills remediation as the primary means of defining existing programs.