A new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF) aims to dispel misperceptions about the success and perseverance of community college students, particularly those who transfer to selective four-year institutions.
The report titled “Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer from Community Colleges to Selective Four-Year Institutions” finds that community college transfer students at selective institutions perform as well as or even better than their peers who enroll directly from high school or who transferred from other four-year schools.
The foundation’s report is also the first of its kind to disaggregate academic outcomes for students transferring in to selective schools from two-year versus four-year institutions. At the nation’s top 100 selective schools, 14 percent of students are transfer students, but only five percent come from community colleges, the report found.
“It’s pretty striking to see that very few students enrolled at the more selective institutions come from community colleges,” said Dr. Jennifer Glynn, director of research at the Cooke Foundation. “We’ve certainly seen this anecdotally with our own scholars how well these transfer students do, but [it is interesting] to be able to document definitely that students who transfer from a community college are equally, if not more, likely to graduate at these selective schools than students who come from high school or that transfer in from another four-year institution.”
JKCF’s report examines National Student Clearinghouse data on students enrolled between 2010 and 2016. Moreover, results show that the percentage of students transferring from community colleges has remained stagnant or slightly declined over the last 10 years at the nation’s most selective institutions, while other institution types have seen a slight percentage increase in their community college transfer population.
Additional report findings include:
-Public institutions enroll four times as many community college transfer students as private institutions: 305,730 versus 75,190, respectively.
