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I’m writing to you today from a ferry as we make our way out of the Stockholm archipelago, heading across the Baltic to Helsinki. Over the past few days, I’ve spent time traveling by train through Norway and Sweden, but what was I reading along the way?
It’s the system that needs changing
The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Community College Research Center have released a new edition of their Transfer Playbook. Drawing on quantitative data, interviews, and in-depth site visits, the report presents a set of strategies for community colleges and the four-year institutions to which their students transfer.
The need for action is clear: while 80% of community college students aspire to transfer and complete a four-year degree, only 16% actually achieve that goal. This gap exists in large part because community college students seeking to transfer have distinct and often unmet needs.
Nearly three-quarters of community college students come from families in the lower half of income distribution. And nearly 50 percent of all Hispanic undergraduates, 43 percent of Black undergraduates, 49 percent of first-generation students, 42 percent of military-affiliated undergraduates, and 40 percent of students from rural areas are enrolled in community colleges. These students are more likely than four-year college students to be parents, come from foster care, and represent a diversity of ages and life experiences.
The report doesn’t explicitly make this point, but I think it’s an important one: even beyond the fact that transfer isn’t working well, the difficulties students face when transferring between institutions represent a major source of frustration. This frustration contributes significantly to the broader anger many students feel toward higher education.
To understand what works, the authors closely examined eight community colleges and nine four-year institutions that implemented reforms leading to improved transfer rates of 52% and bachelor’s completion rates of 61% among transfer students, well above the national averages of 33% and 48%, respectively.
They identified three critical factors behind this success.
To this summary, I would add three points from the report that stood out to me as critical to transfer success.
First, there is a strong focus on addressing students’ financial needs and reducing financial uncertainty. Some of the institutions studied went to considerable lengths to provide financial support and ease the financial burdens that often hinder transfer students.
For students at community colleges in the University of Arkansas System, financial worries about higher costs after they transfer are eased by a scholarship program from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville (UAF) that holds tuition at community college levels if students transfer to the state flagship. Students are eligible for automatic admission to UAF and the scholarship if they (1) complete an associate degree, (2) have GPAs above 2.0, (3) transfer immediately after associate completion, and (4) enroll as degree-seeking undergraduates in a face-to-face program (which can include online courses). By maintaining good academic standing and continuous enrollment, transfer students can renew their scholarship for up to 10 terms or completion of a bachelor’s degree, whichever comes first.
Second, the report highlights the importance of close collaboration between four-year institutions and community colleges, including financial risk-sharing. For example, the Northern Virginia Community College system and George Mason University split the costs of eight staff members (out of a total of twenty-one) in the unit supporting transfer students.
Finally, all of the institutions profiled employed systems of solutions. Rather than relying on isolated best practices, they implemented integrated sets of practices designed to work together as a cohesive whole, often creating a seamless journey from the student’s starting point to degree completion. This systems approach is clearly critical but often overlooked. Institutions too easily focus on a single promising practice while ignoring how different practices must interconnect to support one another.
But, of course, the report also raised some questions for me (you’d be disappointed if it didn’t).
First, while I understand the value of highlighting successful institutions—and the difficulties of calling out poor practices—I believe we often learn more from failure. What strategies didn’t work, and what lessons can we draw from them?
Second, I have some lingering questions about scalability. At times, the report emphasizes the importance of building routines and normalizing transfer as part of institutional culture. But in other places, particularly in discussions about financial aid, it doesn’t fully confront the question of how scalable these solutions are.
Finally, and closely related to the question of scale, I was surprised by how many labor-intensive processes remain in place, even at these more successful institutions.
