Hye Sun Moon

Transfer Between Community Colleges and 4-Year Colleges: The All-American Game

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors introduce a novel way, using the metaphor of a baseball game, to evaluate and measure community college student progress for those whose stated goal is to transfer to a 4-year institution and, ultimately, earn a bachelors degree. The proposed framework of “the Transfer Game” is an outgrowth of the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students (TRUCCS) project, which is a longitudinal study of 5,000 community college students from the 9-campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District. The goal of the project is to explain how the “all-American game” provides a method to measure, comprehend, and visualize student progression, and identify the factors that predict both success and barriers. The framework provides a scholarly comparison of the all-American game of baseball to the All-American invention of the community college.

Course Shopping in Urban Community Colleges: An Analysis of Student Drop and Add Activities

Course shopping, a widely practiced postsecondary enrollment behavior, has rarely been studied. Generally considered benign, the practice may not always prove beneficial. This study identified and named four different types of course shopping behaviors. The research compared each of the four types, finding significant differences in GPA, successful course completion, gender, and course type.

Community and Diversity in Urban Community Colleges: Coursetaking Among Entering Students

Maxwell, Hagedorn, Cypers, Moon, Brocato, Wahl, and Prather (pp. 21-46) This study examines a sample of 15 courses in relation to 4 variables of student characteristics: gender, ethnicity, age, and full-time or part-time status. Transcripts were analyzed for 6,196 first-semester students from 9 urban colleges. The strongest relations found were between curriculum and ethnicity. Findings raise questions about student dispersal and concentration, campus community, and first-semester attrition.

Native Hawaiian Community College Students: What Happens?.

ABSTRACT Using a weighted database of approximately 3,000 students, this study involves the tracing of the postsecondary history of 2,516 students who identified as Native Hawaiian, graduated from high school between 1993 and 1995, and attended college. Virtually none of the students are 100% Hawaiian. Due to a long history of intermarriage, the Hawaiian race is almost entirely a mixture of Hawaiian and other races and ethnicities. However, all of the students identify with their Native Hawaiian ancestry. Our sample consists of 2 types of students; those who attended the Kamehameha Schools and those who graduated from another school but received postsecondary financial aid from Kamehameha. Our retrospective database allowed us to trace life paths almost a decade after high school, and to identify who attended a community college, who later transferred to a 4-year institution, and who graduated with a B.A. or beyond. Results indicate that the majority of Kamehameha students began their postsecondary experience at a 4-year institution. A small group of students began at a community college and transferred to a 4-year institution with graduation rates competitive to the 4-year starters. A logistic regression equation found that high school grade-point average, socioeconomic status, college financial aid, and family support were significant factors in bachelors degree attainment for the 2-year starters.