Chicago Public Schools (CPS), City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) are expanding the nationally recognized higher education partnership with the launch of “Chicago Roadmap 2.0.”

This next phase of the Chicago Roadmap initiative is designed to ensure students have a seamless transition from high school to community college to four-year institutions — retaining earned credits, reducing barriers to transfer, and keeping them on track for bachelor’s degree completion.

“Chicago Roadmap 2.0 is a game-changer for our students, ensuring that the credits they earn in high school and City Colleges transfer seamlessly and count fully toward a bachelor’s degree,” said CPS Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez. “By strengthening this pipeline, we are making higher education more accessible, affordable, and attainable.”

Initiated through an unprecedented partnership between CPS and CCC in 2020, the Chicago Roadmap supports students along a path to and through college on the way to their chosen careers. The partnership ensures aligned academic standards, curriculum, and postsecondary preparation to improve student success. So far, the partnership has yielded some extraordinary outcomes:

• Increased Early College enrollment for CPS students by 62%, adding nearly 4,000 more students who reflect the demographics of CPS – emphasizing the district’s commitment to eliminating opportunity gaps.
• Expanded access in 20 CPS schools to more in-demand hands-on career pathways in fields like tech, health care, manufacturing and construction.
• Expanded access to future career exploration for more than 3,000 middle and high school students annually, through Spotlight Days.
• Significantly increased career guidance by increasing postsecondary navigators from seven in 16 schools to 18 in 91 schools.

Building on Roadmap success

Building on this foundational success, Chicago Roadmap 2.0 will now introduce structured pathways to four-year degrees at UIC, starting with key fields such as education, health care, business and computer science.

UIC has played a pivotal role in the collaboration that underlie this initiative, designing strategies to eliminate barriers to credit transfer and to ensure that students stay on track for degree completion. With coordinated proactive advising, personalized degree planning, and targeted student support services, through Roadmap 2.0, UIC, City Colleges and CPS will revolutionize how students and families understand degree requirements, empowering them with robust student support networks.

A model for the future of higher ed

Roadmap 2.0 represents a commitment to student success by establishing a clear model and structured pathways to a bachelor’s degree. The expanded partnership ensures that credits earned through Early College and advanced coursework – including Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) – directly align to a bachelor’s degree so students do not lose credits when they transfer.

Key components of the expanded initiative include:
– Guaranteed transfer admission programs
– Development of effective transfer pathways with zero credit loss
– Coordinated academic advising and student support across CPS, CCC, and UIC
– Strengthened resources for transfer students to ensure persistence and graduation
– Personalized degree planning through an interactive AI-powered portal

The degree planning tool features an interactive portal to help students and their families navigate college and career pathways with dynamic term-by-term degree plans. The AI-powered tool will initially incorporate course credits from CPS, CCC and UIC, before expanding to include other two-year and four-year partners. The portal is currently under development and is expected to launch in fall 2026.

“The launch of 2.0 will strengthen student persistence and completion rates by offering early college coursework, advising, and academic alignment across institutions,” said CCC Chancellor Juan Salgado. “The AI tool removes the uncertainty and clearly shows students the path from point A to point B, saving our students both time and money.”

The Chicago Roadmap partnership is made possible thanks in part to generous philanthropic contributions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation, CME Group Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Bolhous Foundation, Lefkofsky Family Foundation, Salesforce Foundation, Vivo Foundation and anonymous donors.

This article was originally published here.