The internship program at La Guardia Community College (New York) confirms the possibility of achieving the level of employer participation required for the success of an educational reform movement centered on work-based learning. The La Guardia program, which has existed for 25 years and has provided 1,800-2,000 internships annually, shares its basic philosophy and fundamental characteristics with the educational strategy of the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act and related state-funded activities. Among the lessons the La Guardia program holds for the broader school-to-work movement are the following: (1) an internship program involving hundreds of thousands of placements and hundreds of employers can be run successfully if program staff work to maintain a relatively small core group of large employers willing to provide many internships quarter after quarter; (2) because self-interest and cost savings are more important to employers than philanthropic arguments, programs are best marketed as sources of mature, inexpensive, and at least partly trained employees; (3) if work-based education is to expand significantly, programs must use a mix of employer-based paid placements and self-developed and unpaid placements; and (4) program planners should devote more attention to defining and measuring work placements' quality and place more emphasis on career exploration and generic skills. (MN)