Research shows that only about 10 percent of students who enter community colleges end up getting a bachelor’s degree, even though surveys find that between 50 and 80 percent of incoming community college students have that goal. The very low transfer and completion rates are enormously problematic on a number of different levels.
For one thing, given that increasing numbers of students are choosing to begin tertiary education at community colleges, the low transfer rate will severely hamper the efforts of higher education to meet the projected growing demand for more employees with bachelor’s degrees.
For another, the low rate of transfers weakens community colleges themselves. To the extent that two-year institutions become widely known as places where very few students eventually go on to earn B.A.’s, middle- and upper-middle-class students are likely to shy away from community colleges. This flight, in turn, could further weaken the political and cultural capital of the two-year sector. (Research finds that this is already happening.)
Likewise, low transfer rates hamper the efforts of more selective colleges to maintain and increase racial and socioeconomic diversity. The lack of socioeconomic diversity at the nation’s most selective 146 institutions—where wealthy students outnumber low-income students by 25:1—has long been a national disgrace. And new threats to racial affirmative action in the courts suggest that selective four-year institutions may need to find new ways to build diversity. One way is to providing an admissions preference to promising students currently enrolled in community colleges, 42 percent of whom are the first in their family to attend college, and 45 percent of whom are from an underrepresented racial minority group.
For all these reasons, a new report, published by the College Board is especially well timed. Entitled Improving Student Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions—The Perspective of Leaders from Baccalaureate-Granting Institutions, the report draws on lessons from 12 four-year institutions that are particularly committed to community college transfers, including Georgetown University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M, the University of California at Los Angeles, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Southern California.
Among the lessons from the report, written by the College Board’s Stephen J. Handel, are the following:
* Begin recruiting community-college transfer students while they are still in high school. For example, UCLA has created a one-week summer program for students who plan to enroll in community college and are interested in eventually transferring to UCLA. These students live for a week on UCLA’s campus, attend lectures, become familiar with the university, and begin to actively plan a transfer strategy. These students, says UCLA’s Alfred Herrera, “enter a community college with a plan of action” and begin to see themselves as becoming “UCLA transfer students.”
* Pledge to guarantee admissions for community-college students who meet certain criteria. Officials with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill meet with high-school students who do not qualify for admissions under traditional freshman criteria, but guarantee them that if they attend a participating community college, complete certain courses, achieve a high GPA, and meet regularly with advisers, they will be guaranteed admission to UNC Chapel Hill. “We promise” students “that their work is going to pay off,” says UNC’s Steve Farmer.
* Make transfers part of the college culture. Community colleges should establish a “transfer-going culture” similar to the “college-going culture” found in many high schools; and four-year institutions should establish a “transfer-receptive culture,” which includes the establishment of an institutional voice for transfer students, full-fledged transfer student orientation programs equivalent to those provided freshmen, and “transfer centers” to help transfer students located in prominent places on campus.
For a host of reasons, America must do much better than a 10-percent B.A. success rate among entering community-college students. The College Board’s report provides some important practical advance on how to address a significant piece of the problem.
