Welcome to College Confidential!
The leading college-bound community on the web
Sign Up For Free
Join for FREE, and start talking with other members, weighing in on community discussions, and more.
Also, by registering and logging in you'll see fewer ads and pesky welcome messages (like this one!)
As a CC member, you can:
- Reply to threads, and start your own.
- Post reviews of your campus visits.
- Find hundreds of pages of informative articles.
- Search from over 3 million scholarships.
Quick Links
Find A College
Articles: Expert Advice
Top Forums
Report: Students Who Transfer From Community College to 4-Year Schools Show Excellent Outcomes
CCEdit_Torrey
Editor Posts: 178 Editor
A new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation reveals that community college students who transfer to selective schools perform as well as or better than those who enroll directly from high school or who transferred from other four-year schools.
Thinking of transferring from community college to a four-year university? Check these expert answers to FAQs: https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/four-faqs-about-transferring-from-community-college-to-a-four-year-school/
Thinking of transferring from community college to a four-year university? Check these expert answers to FAQs: https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/four-faqs-about-transferring-from-community-college-to-a-four-year-school/
Post edited by CCEdit_Torrey on
Replies to: Report: Students Who Transfer From Community College to 4-Year Schools Show Excellent Outcomes
https://www.jkcf.org/research/persistence/
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/01/community-college-transfers-elite-schools/580411/
It looks like at UC overall, transfers' 2-year graduation rates are lower than frosh 4-year graduation rates, but transfers' 3- and 4-year graduation rates are higher than frosh 5- and 6-year graduation rates. This suggests that transfers are more likely to finish, but more likely take an extra quarter or semester beyond the nominal time (average time to degree for 2010 entrants to UC overall was 4.18 years for frosh, 2.38 years for transfers). The need for extra quarters or semesters may be due to not every community college having full coverage of every lower division course for many popular majors at UCs (e.g. computer science is often difficult to find full coverage for, due to variation in UC lower division computer science courses), so transfer students in these majors have to "catch up" after transfer.
Yes, but the UC data shows that the JKCF's conclusion should not be surprising, despite the disdain against community college transfers commonly found on these forums.
I don't have the data to support what I observed. I do recall studies showing that students who transferred from my cc to our state flagship (UIUC) had higher GPA's in the final 2 years than those who were there from freshman year on. I would have kept those articles if I had thought about it :)
Despite a lot of people's disdain for cc's, they do attract some number of students who are very academically talented and ambitious.
In the 3rd Par of the first page they clearly note that they have ZERO info on the income/other demographics of the transferring population. (Too bad, bcos that was my first question when I saw the headline of this thread, i.e., what is the income and work levels of those transferring to highly selective schools? Note, that the tippy tops like Stanford prefer non-trads transfers, while other highly selective schools like NYU have crappy finaid.) But then the report goes on to say, even given the limits, we went ahead and published this report bcos "we do believe that high-achieving students who aren’t affluent should have access to the same opportunities and resources as their more advantaged peers. "
In other words, 'we have no idea of the economic of the transfers in this so-called study, but we'll just assume that they are all poor' so we can support our pov.
Yes, on average, community college students are poorer than those students who attend a highly selective college (half of which are full pay). But for JFK to make these conclusions, they NEED the economic data on the transferring students. Or, if a school like USC is in the mix, what about football transfers? :-)
Disappointingly poor research, IMO. The good news for them, however, is that the masses won't see or care about the nuances.
At Berkeley, the transfer cohort has a higher percentage of Latino/Chicano students, a higher percentage of black students, a considerably lower percentage of Asian-Americans, and a considerably higher percentage of internationals. This suggests that money plays a big part in the choice of a student to do their first two years at community college and then transfer to a California public.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-glance can give some UC numbers on transfers versus frosh (entry level) versus various characteristics (e.g. parent education, ethnicity). Unfortunately, the most direct characteristics for this question (entry level and Pell grant) are not available together in the same tab.
Students with non-college-educated parents are more likely to be Pell grant students and transfers compared to students with college educated parents.
Only if you're speculating about the income and demographics of the students.
The OP says community college student transfers do well when they are admitted to elites, period.
I infer that CC students either didn't apply to elites as HS seniors, or didn't have the grades/test scores to get in, or couldn't afford anything other than CC, or their parents were poor planners without good financial safeties, or their parents simply thought they'd do better at a local CC for some reason, perhaps to live at home or deal with an illness. Any/all of those.
I agree, that's remarkable.
The one in the OP, the Jack Kent Cooke report. About half of the students nationwide who transfer from community college to Most Selective colleges transfer to Berkeley or UCLA.