Identifying Effective 2- to 4-Year College Transfer Partnerships

What is it about?

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.

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Why is it important?

One of the key functions of community colleges is to provide lower division education to prepare students to transfer to bachelor’s degree programs at 4-year institutions. Although a large volume of studies document the benefits of attaining a bachelor’s degree among native 4-year entrants as well as among transfers, relatively few community college students attain a bachelor’s degree. Of the nearly two million students who enter higher education through community colleges each year, 80% indicate that they intend to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree. However, only about a third of community college entrants ever transfer to a 4-year institution and ultimately fewer than 15% complete a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. Yet, given the large number of community college enrollees who seek a bachelor’s degree, the community college to 4-year institution transfer pathway has significant potential for increasing baccalaureate attainment nationally. For example, a simple extrapolation suggests that a 5-percentage-point increase in the rate at which students transfer from community colleges to 4-year institutions would yield an estimated 42,000 additional bachelor degrees each year, given the current bachelor completion rate among transfers; the number would be even larger if the baccalaureate completion rate for transfer students was improved as well. Although the academic preparation of students to transfer successfully to 4-year colleges has been traditionally viewed as the major responsibility of the home institution (community colleges), there is a growing consensus on the equally critical role of the receiving institutions (4-year colleges) in supporting students’ academic success after transfer. To smooth the transition from one institution to the other and provide necessary support throughout the whole process, 2-year and 4-year institutions must work together more effectively as partners. As Bahr, Toth, Thirolf, and Masse (2013) point out in their extensive review of the literature on the experience and outcomes of community college students who transfer to 4-year institutions, “To quote an old adage, ‘it takes two to tango.’ Both the community college and the four-year institution share responsibility for the outcomes of community college transfer students”. The goal of improving the transfer partnerships cannot be fully achieved, at least not to scale, until colleges nationwide are provided with commonly accepted metrics and methods for measuring the effectiveness of 2- and 4-year institutions in serving transfer students and receiving help with identifying scalable and sustainable practices that improve students’ transfer outcomes.

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