“If you want to transfer and get your bachelor’s, you have to make a plan. You have to make sure you’re getting your courses in sequence so you’re not in school forever and you’re not in huge amounts of debt.” - Community College Advisor
Dr. Courtney Adkins
Most community college students intend to transfer. Sixty-seven percent of 2024 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) respondents across 164 institutions indicated that they were planning to transfer to a four-year college or university. Yet a 2024 report by Community College Research Center, the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, and National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that only about a third of 2015 community college entrants transferred and fewer than half of those who transferred earned a degree in six years.
Another unsettling finding is that, while 2024 CCSSE respondents who are Pell Grant recipients reported intent to transfer at roughly the same rates as non-Pell Grant recipients, the Tracking Transfer report shows that only 11% of low-income students who started at a community college earned a bachelor’s degree in six years. Therefore, the students who stand to gain the most from transferring are the least likely to do so.
What causes the disconnect between intention and reality?
Proponents of the guided pathways movement suggest that transfer and career exploration should happen early in students’ educational journeys so that they can make informed decisions about their course of study and not waste time and money taking courses that won’t count toward a degree. CCSSE is administered in the spring term to mostly returning students, so one might suppose that conversations about transfer had already taken place for students taking the survey.
Yet, when asked specifically if anyone had talked with them about the application process for transferring, 68% of students reported that this had not happened. Part-time students and nontraditional-age students were even less likely to report that someone had talked with them about how to transfer. Additionally, only 37% of students planning to transfer said someone had talked with them about which of their credits would transfer to the university of their choice. Many community colleges provide transfer information to their students through their websites, and while over a third of surveyed students found the information on their college website very useful, one in five students were not aware that such information existed.
