John Fink

Tracking Transfer: New Measures of Institutional and State Effectiveness in Helping Community College Students Attain Bachelor’s Degrees

conducts research on the major issues affecting community colleges in the United States and contributes to the development of practice and policy that expands access to higher education and promotes success for all students. The Aspen Institutes College Excellence Program aims to advance higher education practices, policies, and leadership that significantly improve student outcomes. Through the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the New College Leadership Project, and other initiatives, the College Excellence Program works to improve colleges understanding and capacity to teach and graduate students, especially the growing population of low-income and minority students on American campuses. Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center works with higher education institutions, states, districts, high schools, and educational organizations to better inform practitioners and policymakers about student educational pathways. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes.

What We Know About Transfer

Transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions offers a critical avenue for upward mobility for many underserved students. Most entering community college students intend to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree1—so many that four-year institutions would not be able to accommodate them all as incoming freshmen. Community colleges greatly expand our nation’s postsecondary capacity, serving as the entry point to higher education for over 40 percent of U.S. undergraduates. With their low tuition and open-access mission, community colleges serve many students who either cannot afford to attend a university for all four years or do not meet the more selective admissions criteria of many four-year institutions. Vertical transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions therefore offers a critical avenue for upward mobility for many underserved students, including low-income, first-generation, and racial/ethnic minority students, all of whom are disproportionately represented at community colleges.2

Policy Levers to Strengthen Community College Transfer Student Success in Texas

Texas relies heavily on its community colleges to provide low-cost access to undergraduate coursework for students pursuing a bachelor’s degree.1 Yet, while the majority of Texas students who enter higher education through a community college enroll in transfer programs,2 only 35 percent transfer and only 15 percent earn a bachelor’s degree within six years of starting at a community college. Moreover, there is a large gap in bachelor’s degree attainment between lower-income students who start at a community college and transfer and their higher-income peers. Many community college students who intend to earn a bachelor’s degree make substantial progress in community college but fail to transfer. Among students who transfer, most do so without earning a community college credential.3 Many of those who do graduate end up earning excess credits, wasting their time and money, and making poor use of taxpayer resources.4 While twoto four-year transfer does not work well in many other states, in Texas it seems to be especially inefficient.5

Takes Two to Tango: Essential Practices of Highly Effective Transfer Partnerships

Objective: The objective of this study was to describe practices of 2- and 4-year institutional partnerships effective in supporting transfer student success. Method: Using student records from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide, researchers identified partnerships of 2- and 4-year institutions that were more effective than expected (controlling for student and institutional characteristics) in enabling community college entrants to transfer to a 4-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree. Based on this methodology, and in partnership with the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, researchers visited six pairs of 2- and 4-year college transfer partnerships identified as high performers, interviewing more than 350 faculty, student-facing and senior-level staff, and transfer students. Results: From these in-depth interviews, researchers identified a set of essential transfer practices common among these highly effective institutional partnerships. The practices were grouped under three broad strategies: (a) make transfer a priority, (b) create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction, and (c) provide tailored transfer advising. Contributions: This study offers a set of essential transfer practices culled from national fieldwork to 2- and 4-year institutional transfer partnerships identified using NSC data as highly effective in supporting transfer student success.

Building Blocks: Laying the Groundwork for Guided Pathways Reform in Ohio

thank our partners in the project, the Ohio Association of Community Colleges and the Ohio Department of Higher Education, for their guidance and support. We are also grateful to the faculty and staff from Ohio’s 23 public two-year colleges who participated in this research. In addition to the authors, the CCRC research team included Michael Armijo, Maggie Fay, Porshéa Patterson, and Madeline Joy Trimble. Thomas Bailey of CCRC and Laura Ritter and Cody Loew of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges provided feedback on drafts. Kim Morse, Amy Mazzariello, and Doug Slater of CCRC edited and produced the report. Building Blocks: Laying the Groundwork for Guided Pathways Reform in Ohio

Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights from the AACC Pathways Colleges.

The research presented in this report focused on how the AACC Pathways colleges were designing, planning, and beginning to implement guided pathways reforms during their first year of work on the project, which started in late 2015. AACC chose these colleges to participate in the project because they had laid the groundwork for guided pathways reforms by building organizational cultures open to change. Only a handful had begun implementing guided pathways before joining the project. The expectation is that participating colleges will redesign their programs and support services for all incoming students by fall 2018 according to the guided pathways model adopted by AACC based on CCRC’s research. To help accomplish this, the colleges are sending planning teams to a series of six institutes run by AACC and other national organizations, each on a different aspect of the guided pathways approach. Participating colleges are also receiving coaching from college practitioners who have experience with guided pathways reforms in their own institutions.

Are Community College Transfer Students “A Good Bet” for 4-Year Admissions? Comparing Academic and Labor-Market Outcomes Between Transfer and Native 4-Year College Students

ABSTRACT Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines whether community college “vertical transfer” students who resemble “native four-year” students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and labor market outcomes. We compare matching strategies typically used in existing literature to one where we match vertical transfer and native four-year students based on prior credits earned, accumulative GPA, and the destination four-year institution, and find substantial differences in estimates based on different matching strategies. We also examine potential mechanisms underlying vertical transfer students’ relative performance at the four-year institution and in the labor market. The results show that vertical transfer students’ probability of baccalaureate attainment is comparable to that of similar native students attending the same four-year institution. However, when considering their earnings eight years after initial college enrollment, vertical transfer students experience a significant and nontrivial earnings penalty. Subsequent analyses examining possible mechanisms suggest the earning decrement is partly due to a delayed entry into the labor market as a result of credit loss at the point of transfer.

Using Data Mining to Explore Why Community College Transfer Students Earn Bachelor’s Degrees With Excess Credits

Community college transfer students encounter challenges progressing toward a bachelor’s degree, leading to widespread transfer credit loss. This in turn may lower students’ chances of credential completion and increase the time and costs for students, their families, and taxpayers. In this study we review three definitions of credit transfer inefficiency—credit transferability, credit applicability, and excess credits among completers—focusing on the last to examine why students who start at a community college and transfer to a four-year institution so often end up with excess credits that do not count toward a bachelor’s degree. To shed light on credit transfer inefficiency, we examine the course-taking behaviors of community college transfer students who earn bachelor’s degrees with numerous excess credits compared with transfer students who earn bachelor’s degrees with few excess credits. We employ data-mining techniques to analyze student transcripts from two state systems, enabling us to examine a large number of variables that could explain the variation in students’ excess credits at graduation. These variables include not only student demographics but also the types and timing of courses taken. Overall, we find more excess credits associated with several factors, including taking larger proportions of 100and 200-level courses and smaller proportions of 300-level courses throughout students’ progression toward completion, and taking 100-level courses in any subject—and specifically 100-level math courses— immediately after transferring to a four-year institution. Findings suggest that institutions could help students reduce credit transfer inefficiency by encouraging them to explore and choose a bachelor’s degree major early on so they can take the required lower division (100and 200-level) courses at the community college, thereby enabling them to take mostly upper division 300and 400-level courses in their desired major field once they transfer to a four-year institution.

Collaboratively Clearing the Path to a Baccalaureate Degree: Identifying Effective 2- to 4-Year College Transfer Partnerships

Objective: This study develops an analytical framework for identifying effective partnerships between 2- and 4-year institutions that enable community college entrants to transfer to a 4-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree in a timely fashion. Method: Using the individual term-by-term college enrollment and degree records from the National Student Clearinghouse for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide, we use regressions to control for student and institutional characteristics in identifying effective partnerships in two steps: first, we identify community colleges with large residual values (better than expected outcomes); and second, we identify the 4-year partners of those community colleges with large residual values. Results: Descriptive results on the variation in transfer outcomes among the thousands of unique transfer partnerships nationally are presented alongside results from regressions used in the two-step effective transfer partnership identification. Contributions: Recommendations and considerations for using this framework to evaluate and benchmark institutional performance in supporting the academic success of vertical transfer students for baccalaureate attainment are also discussed.

Strengthening Transfer Paths to a Bachelor’s Degree: Identifying Effective Two-Year to Four-Year College Partnerships

While preparing students academically for vertical transfer to four-year colleges has traditionally been viewed as the major responsibility of the home institutions, there is a growing consensus that the receiving institutions play a critical role in facilitating the transfer process and in supporting students’ academic success after transfer. The goal of improving transfer outcomes cannot be fully achieved until colleges nationwide are provided with commonly accepted metrics and methods for measuring the effectiveness of transfer partnerships. Using the individual term-by-term college enrollment records from the National Student Clearinghouse for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-incollege community college students nationwide, this paper introduces a two-stage, inputadjusted, value-added analytic framework for identifying partnerships of twoand fouryear institutions that are more effective than expected in enabling community college students to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree in a timely fashion. In doing so, the paper provides a description of transfer patterns nationwide, broken out by key institutional characteristics. Recommendations and cautions for using this framework to evaluate and benchmark institutional performance in terms of supporting the academic success of vertical transfer students for baccalaureate attainment are also discussed.