A Welcome Mat for Community-College Transfer Students

July 22, 2011, 11:28 am

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.

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schmitzhaj

Given that the report and strategies highlighted here are from the perspective of four-year institutions, where should community colleges look for guidance on creating a “transfer-going culture”?
bamicucci

At Queensborough Community College our AAS nursing students are welcomed into a “transfer-going culture” as soon as they are admitted. We begin the conversation about moving into a baccalaureate degree program even before they start classes. Students learn that the AAS in nursing is a starting point for their lifelong educational journey. We give them information about RN to BSN programs that are delivered in both on-line and classroom formats so they can make an individual decision about which educational path they should continue on.

The AAS still provides one valuable path for entry into the profession of nursing, but our students understand that they need to continue.
oh_comm_prof

The transfer-going culture is built on learning outcomes that meet academic discipline, accreditation, and employment standards. These efforts require significant commitment from the institution’s administration as well as faculty. Several OH community colleges offer good examples of practice.
As a faculty at a 4yr transfer-oriented school I would say partnerships at a program level are important, but stress that the partnerships are based on mutual respect and a shared orientation to upholding academic standards while readying students to be competitive in the job market. I highly value collaboration with CC peers and together we work to serve students and alumni.
11167997

A lot of this is old stuff, and I wonder where Kahlenberg has been since the former Transfer Assembly started out on these things in 1991. Two pieces are missing from the College Board report, too, that Kahlenberg might have spotted and noted: (1) The “Alliance” models
under which the student enters both the community college and the 4-year institution simultaneously, starts in the community college with full access to the 4-year’s facilities and services, and moves over to the 4-year only after X credits (usually 30 or 36). There aren’t many of these; participation is low; and they aren’t working as well as they could. (2) Workshops for high school math and English teachers conducted by community colleges in their “feeder” areas, demonstrating, by use of the 2nd quiz in College Algebra and the 2nd or 3rd assignment in standard Freshman Comp, what high school graduates should be on the cusp of achieving in those additive credit courses, as a way of driving up the competence levels of high school curricula among students recruited for the transfer path (let alone among everybody). This is the type of approach advocated and illustrate by Achieve in the American Diploma Project. We need a lot more of it.
bekka_alice

The Colorado Community College System’s central office and member colleges have forged agreements on common course numbering and course content among its member colleges, and leveraged uniform expectation of learning goals to build credit transfer agreements with four-year institutions to help facilitate student movement into a four-year degree. I’m not one of the administrators who have worked on this ongoing transfer facilitation project, but I’m still rather proud of their impact. ^_^
11274135

It would be useful if we could find some way to recognize community colleges for their good work other than the number of degrees they award. This encourages the 2 + 2 model which enforces a course taking pattern for students who start at the community college that is different from that of students who start at a four year college. The 2+2 assumes that students should complete all of their general education the first two years while just barely getting started on majors. But if you look at the transcripts of students who start at 4 year colleges, you will see that most of them spread gen ed courses across the whole time they spend on their bachelors degrees, saving some to diversify the last couple of years when their are concentrating on the major. They also may begin upper division coursework in their majors as sophomores, and maybe they will change majors at about that time. The 2 + 2 model postpones engagement in the major (which encourages students to transfer after a year) and delays a student’s recognition that the initial choice of major may have been a wrong one until later in the students progress, often requiring additional courses work to make the adjustment.

Thus, it would be better for many students if they could engage in “progressive transfer,” maybe starting full time at the community college and, through concurrent enrollment arrangements, progressively shift the proportion of courses taken at the 2 year and 4 year school, eventually becoming full time at the 4 year school. Transfer becomes a “process” rather than an “event,” and student can take courses in a more balanced sequence. It is not always to the student’s advantage to complete an associates degree, yet it is also possible in some cases for the student to use a greater proportion of community college courses than half. Students would be able to optimize the educational resources available to them, depending on the major. There are obviously some financial advantages in progressive transfer as well, allowing students to optimize their education dollars. But it may result in fewer associate degrees being awarded, even thought students take as many or more community college hours.

“Alliance” and “partnership” models of transfer offer the conditions for progressive transfer. The standard 2 + 2 does not. But community colleges must be recognized for their contribution to academic success in these models, and the meat axe strategy of counting degrees awarded is no where near being a subtle enough measure for the purpose.
ordinary_man

In Florida, any one with an AA degree from a Florida school is guarenteed admission to at least one of the 11 state universities.
jb1373

Yes, but even with the 2+2 in place, many of the SUS schools are not honoring the agreement, putting in more difficult program entry requirements and denying access to specific high-demand entries. Strangely, many of the community colleges and universities are adding “new” agreements, even though the 2+2 is already in place and, if honored, does what they are attempting to renew already.