Enhancing Transition Programming for College Students with Autism: A Systematic Literature Review

This article provides a systematic review of the literature related to college transition programs for students with autism. It addresses how individual programs themselves, as well as associated research, can be enhanced to accommodate the needs, identities, and pathways of individual students with autism more effectively. Methods entailed searching three education databases to yield peer-reviewed journal articles on college autism transition programs. The analysis revealed an emphasis on students' social skills and self-advocacy skills, often with a peer mentorship component, and a deficiency of literature in attending to these students' career objectives, trajectories into college, and multifaceted backgrounds. Implications for practice include offering early exposure to college, redesigning programs to include more awareness of students' other identities, embedding more content on career development, and accounting for community college students' and transfer students' unique pathways.