NEW YORK, NY >> A new report on college transfer released today by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University; the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program; and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that California’s community colleges and four-year institutions are above the national average (14 percent) in helping community college students transfer to and graduate from four-year schools. Read the full report here.
“Research indicates that the vast majority of students who enter higher education through community colleges intend to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher, but only 14 out of every 100 in the nation succeed,” said Davis Jenkins, Senior Research Associate at CCRC. “These findings show us that while California has relatively strong bachelor’s degree outcomes among community college students compared to other states, more can be done to address the disparity in outcomes between lower- and higher-income students.”
Among California community college students who started in the fall of 2007, 15 percent transferred and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years of initially enrolling. The new report, which ranks 43 states (seven states did not have enough available data to be included in the rankings), includes measurements on a number of factors that contribute to the success of both community colleges and four-year schools in increasing the rate that community college students earn bachelor’s degrees.
“Nearly half of all undergraduates in our country are in community colleges. These students are more likely to be from low-income families and to be students of color than those who start in four-year universities, said Josh Wyner, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. “Given the changing demographics of our nation, fixing the transfer bottleneck is not just the right thing to do, it is absolutely necessary if we are to deliver the talent our communities and nation need to fuel economic opportunity and growth.”
Studies have shown that nationally 80 percent of new community college students report wanting to earn a bachelor’s degree. However, only 14 percent of the 720,000 degree-seeking students examined in the study who enrolled in community college for the first time in fall 2007 transferred to and graduated from a four-year university within six years of entry. Among students who started at community college and successfully transferred, only 42 percent completed a bachelor’s degree. This is far below the 60 percent degree attainment rate of students who started at public four-year colleges.
Closing the Gap
The transfer report, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, found that in most states, lower-income students had worse outcomes than their higher-income peers on transfer and bachelor’s degree completion. However, that gap is quite small or non-existent in a few states, including Florida, Iowa, North Dakota, and New Hampshire.
The report found that there was huge variation in the effectiveness of the community colleges and four-year colleges in helping students transfer and complete bachelor’s degrees. Students who transferred to public colleges performed better than those at private colleges, and those who transferred to very selective colleges did better than those who transferred to nonselective colleges.
“These data indicate that the practices of the colleges—their programs for transfer students and collaboration between two- and four-year destination colleges—can make a big difference in whether transfer students are successful,” said Douglas Shapiro, Executive Research Director at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “This makes it clear how important it is for two- and four-year institutions to work together to fix the transfer problem.”
