COVID-19 has heightened higher education’s existing barriers for students, and transfer students are no exception. Last week, 25 higher education reform and research organizations signed a call to action to persuade higher ed leaders and lawmakers to prioritize streamlining the transfer process.
The organizations are all part of the Scaling Partners Network, a group brought together by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Signatories include the National Student Clearinghouse, the American Association of Community Colleges, Achieving the Dream and Excelencia in Education.
“On the institutions or systems side of it, everybody is still trying to put out fires,” said Nyema Mitchell, associate director of Jobs for the Future Inc. (JFF) and one of the signatories. “And I don’t know that transfer is a priority.”
But she and her colleagues are arguing that it should be.
Scholars are expecting a wave of student mobility, including students changing their educational pathways as the pandemic adds more uncertainty to their lives.
According to a report released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center last Tuesday, transfers from two-year to four-year institutions “unexpectedly increased” by 2.6% after no growth last year. Overall transfer enrollment, however, is down by 4.7%. While that’s only slightly steeper than enrollment slumps across higher education, it’s also double the decrease from last year.
Transfer trends are also historically uneven. The way transfer pathways are – or aren’t – set up can “promote serious inequities and injustices by income, race and ethnicity,” said Dr. Martha Ellis, interim managing director of the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin and one of the signatories on the call to action.
