The challenges that face community-college students who want a four-year degree are well documented. We encourage our least-prepared students to start college at two-year institutions because they have no admission requirements and are far less expensive than four-year institutions. But unfortunately community colleges are not sufficiently funded by state and local governments to meet the needs of the students they enroll.
We then compound the problem by requiring that these students do something that we never insist Ivy League students do: switch to a new institution in the middle of their undergraduate experience. The students do this with limited guidance from four-year institutions and few assurances about how their courses will transfer.
Of course, some students transfer without difficulty. And there is considerable research revealing that students who successfully cross the transfer chasm end up completing their degrees as quickly and successfully as students who began at four-year institutions. Still, the gap between transfer-student aspiration and reality is as distressing as it is wide. Only 14 percent of students who start out at community colleges transfer to four-year institutions and earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to a report released last year by the Community College Research Center and others.
These problems are not unknown by education leaders. But the strategies they have employed to help students transfer to four-year colleges often miss the mark. Well-intentioned efforts, such as statewide common course-number schemes, place the academic cart before the horse. While community colleges are often criticized for low transfer rates, the key for transfer success is academic preparation and transparency, as articulated by the institutions that grant the baccalaureate degree.
Colleges are simplifying the steps from community college to four-year degree.
Fortunately, two national trends suggest that this ethic is gaining traction. The first trend is the development of “associate degrees for transfer,” which allow students to complete both general-education requirements and premajor requirements at their community colleges, earning guaranteed admission to four-year institutions. Typically, the curricular expectations for these degrees are developed by the faculty in each discipline at the four-year institutions. Community-college faculty members then identify specific course options for students, depending on what is offered at their specific institutions.
For example, the California State University system — the largest recipient of transfer students in California — and the California Community Colleges have developed 33 different associate degrees for transfer in a variety of disciplines. Students who complete all requirements at a community college enjoy guaranteed admission to a specific major at a college within the CSU system. In the process, students earn an associate degree, an outcome that has labor-market value, especially if a student must leave college to deal with family or work needs.
The second trend is “guided pathways,” a series of courses students take when they enter community colleges, which are designed to transform their nascent ideas about college into concrete plans for transfer. This idea emanated from research showing that students who have an academic “road map” when they first begin at a community college — even a tentative plan — are more likely to reach their educational goals.
The problem is that most students have only a vague idea of their academic trajectory as freshmen, leading them to complete unnecessary courses when they enter college. For a community-college student whose academic competitiveness as a transfer student depends on the number of “useful” credits accumulated in the lower division, this is pivotal.
To provide students with some academic organizing principle, coalitions like Complete College America have promoted guided pathways or “meta majors” to link students to a general disciplinary focus. If a student has a desire to be a doctor or a nurse, for example, a guided pathway will link him or her to some of the basic courses in biology, math, and chemistry that are required for these careers.
At the University of California, the faculty took this approach a step further by developing “Transfer Pathways” for 21 of the most popular transfer majors. These pathways provide students with a single set of course expectations that, if fulfilled, make them competitive for admission at any one of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. For example, a student whose major is biology can complete a single set of courses that will satisfy this major anywhere in the University of California system. In reality, these pathways prepare students well for multiple majors within any given disciplinary area; physical or natural sciences present the most lock-step curricular sequences, but faculty also developed coherent pathways in the social sciences and humanities.
These approaches — faculty-centered, student-focused — await empirical verification. But given that our previous approaches to boosting transfer have not met with much success, a change in strategy is warranted. Moreover, these strategies complement other efforts for which states and institutions have already made significant investments. Course transfer, common course-numbering systems, and transfer counseling are enhanced when faculty members provide students with explicit academic road maps and four-year institutions team up with community colleges to provide students with transparent advice and counsel about the conditions for successful transfer admission.
The desire of community-college students to transfer and earn a four-year degree is not a new one. It has been around as long as two-year institutions have existed. Our success in helping our most vulnerable students take advantage of this uniquely progressive American pathway, however, has been more elusive. The approaches here get us back on the right track.
