The opportunity to transfer from a community college to a four-year institution is one of the most powerful tools that the American higher-education system has for democratizing bachelor’s-degree attainment. It enables students who would otherwise stop at a two-year associate degree to continue their education journey in bachelor’s programs that are personally fulfilling and increase their chances of finding a job that pays a living wage.
Transfer also plays a critical role for four-year institutions: Community-college students represent a major source of enrollment of low-income, Hispanic, and Black students, which is critical in light of last year’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down the use of race in college admissions. Community-college transfers are more likely to persist into the second year at a four-year college and to graduate within four years than those who start fresh at a college or transfer from another four-year institution. This makes community-college transfers a key group to foster diversity on college campuses and among degree completers.
But while 80 percent of community-college students aspire to transfer, only a third do so, and only 16 percent complete a bachelor’s degree. These low rates haven’t budged for many years, and they are even worse for low-income, Black, and Hispanic community-college students, who have completion rates of 11 percent, 9 percent, and 13 percent, respectively.
Why are the numbers so low? First, transferring to a four-year institution is a complex process, and colleges don’t provide adequate advising and support that is transfer-specific. They also lack well-structured and clear transfer pathways, leaving students on their own to figure out what four-year institutions they can transfer to and what is the appropriate coursework that will best lead to a bachelor’s degree. While partnerships between community colleges and four-year institutions can help ensure that credits from the community college apply toward a bachelor’s degree, such partnerships are not common and sometimes consist only of complex “articulation agreements” that are hard for students to understand. As a result, students are left alone to navigate a sea of information in creating their own path toward the bachelor’s degree they want to complete.
In recent research, my colleagues and I at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program analyzed student data from the National Student Clearinghouse to measure the performance of community colleges and four-year institutions in enabling students to transfer and earn degrees. We found that while transfer and bachelor’s completion metrics are low across the nation, wide variation in outcomes suggests that positive and equitable practices are occurring in some areas and at some colleges. In Washington and California, low-income and Black community-college students transferring to public four-year institutions have better chances of completing a bachelor’s degree than in most other states — more than 65 percent complete a bachelor’s degree within four years after transferring. Similarly, 27 percent of community colleges exceed the national average in the rate of transfer students who complete a bachelor’s degree while having have no disparities in transfer completion rates for their Hispanic students.
Many community colleges and four-year transfer destinations have figured out how to better help their students transfer and succeed. What can we learn from these examples? And based on that, what can college and state leaders do to improve bachelor’s attainment among community-college students while reducing disparities? The data led us to four major takeaways:
1. States should establish transfer systems that ease credit transferability and offer major-specific transfer pathways. A major stumbling block for transfer students is when they cannot apply all of their community-college credits toward their bachelor’s-degree program. In California and Washington, though, two-year and four-year institutions have collaborated to create transfer-oriented degrees, make coursework consistent, and facilitate the transferability of credits. Researchers found that as a result of reforms in California, the number of students earning associate degrees increased. Research on a statewide transfer-articulation policy in North Carolina showed that transfer students completed bachelor’s degrees with fewer excess credits. But in order for these statewide strategies to achieve equitable outcomes, many other successful practices must be in place, such as reforms to developmental education (which can derail student momentum and complicate transfer prospects) and robust transfer advising and support from community-college entry through bachelor’s completion.
2. States and community colleges should strengthen partnerships with four-year institutions that deliver strong outcomes for transfer students — and hold those that do not deliver strong outcomes accountable. Not all four-year institutions are the same when it comes to the bachelor’s-completion rates of community-college transfers. For-profit and predominantly online institutions have exceedingly low bachelor’s-completion rates for transfer students — not even half of the national average (23 percent and 25 percent, compared to 52 percent). They have even lower rates for Black and low-income students. While for-profits tend to underperform on bachelor’s-completion rates for community-college transfers, Hispanic-serving and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions have above average bachelor’s-completion rates for this cohort. These national findings suggest that minority-serving institutions may be strong allies for promoting timely completion for transfer students.
3. On-ramps to bachelor’s completion should start in high school. Dual-enrollment students who start at a community college have much stronger transfer and bachelor’s-completion outcomes than students with no dual-enrollment coursework. This holds across states and among Black and low-income students: Those who were dual enrollees in high school have double the bachelor’s-completion rate of students who never took dual enrollment, with 57 percent transferring to a four-year college within six years and 35 percent completing their bachelor’s degree. But, while participation in dual enrollment has grown — high schoolers now comprise nearly one in five community-college students — Black, Hispanic, and English language learners are severely underrepresented among dual enrollees. State and college leaders need to make more efforts to identify and expand the benefits of dual enrollment to all students, especially those from historically underserved groups. There are several ways states can expand dual enrollment, including increasing funding, changing eligibility requirements, and providing more support to students, colleges, and K-12 partnerships.
4. We need to continuously measure and monitor transfer outcomes to identify areas for improvement. The U.S. Department of Education, through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and a recent one-time release of transfer outcomes, provides some aggregated transfer metrics. These tend to be insufficient because they track only some segments of students, like full-time students or federal-aid recipients. Also, they do not allow institutions to disaggregate data by sending/receiving sector (let alone institutional partners), nor are they continuously measured, making tracking progress difficult. Our reports bridge some of this gap by providing national and state-by-state transfer metrics that state leaders can use to examine how they are serving transfer students, which groups are least well served, and whether they have made progress over the last decade. But institutions need more support from their states to measure and monitor transfer metrics. At the very least, states need to provide the public with information on transfer outcomes that allows comparisons across institutions and that tracks progress over time.
To make these improvements happen, transfer needs to become a top priority for state and college leaders. Education leaders and policymakers need to bring successful practices to more states and colleges; to support these efforts, CCRC and the Aspen Institute’s 2016 Transfer Playbook documented the transfer strategies of 14 high-performing institutions across the nation. (This fall, we will update the playbook with lessons from a new set of partnerships with the strongest and most equitable outcomes.)
But one thing is critical across the board: State and college leaders need to actively engage in improving transfer strategies. As our data shows, the transfer pipeline is leaking from the community colleges to the four-year institutions. If they want to increase their contribution to a more educated and diverse work force, transfer requires substantial revision and reform.