Community College Transfer Rates to 4-Year Institutions Using Alternative Definitions of Transfer

摘要

A large proportion of undergraduates attend public 2-year institutions seeking a wide range of services, from a place to experiment with postsecondary education to a structured vocational certificate or associates degree program. Although the course offerings and degree programs of many community colleges can accommodate diverse student interests and goals, preparing students to transfer to a 4-year college remains a central characteristic of community colleges. This preparation is key to the community colleges role in higher education because it affirms the community colleges claim to a collegiate, academic identity and to a role in broadening access for those historically excluded from a college education. Moreover, transfer is a component of most community college students educational aspirations. Despite, or perhaps because of, the importance of transfer from 2- to 4-year institutions, calculating the percentage of community college students who transfer has proven to be somewhat problematic. At first glance, the transfer rate seems relatively unambiguous: it is the number of students who transfer to a 4-year college divided by the number of potential transfer students. However, the numerator and especially the denominator can both be defined in a number of different ways, each having a significant impact on the transfer estimate. The purpose of the present study is to use nationally representative community college data to examine several ways of defining the population of potential transfer students, the relationship of these definitions to student background characteristics, and the relationship of each definition to the resulting transfer rate. This report consists of three sections. The first section describes the dataset used in the analysis and the measurement issues implicated in the study of transfer. The second section presents the selected indicators of the key concepts in the study and the results of the analysis. The report concludes with a discussion of the results in the context of other studies of community college students and transfer.