The doors of the nation’s most selective four-year colleges and universities have begun closing in the faces of aspiring low-income transfer students from community colleges over the last two decades, a new study suggests.
“The Study of Economic, Informational and Cultural Barriers to Community College Student Transfer Access at Selective Universities” found 10.5 percent of students entering elite private four-year schools were transfer students in 1984. But by 2002, that percentage had been cut in half to 5.7 percent.
During the same time period, transfer students at selective public institutions fell from 22.2 percent to 18.8 percent. And now fewer than 1 of every 1,000 students at the nation’s most choosy private four-year institutions is a community college transfer, according to the study.
Students who do manage to transfer are usually atypical community college students from well-to-do families. Making that transfer is an immense task that needs a lot of guidance and leads to culture shock among the unprepared, says Dr. Alicia Dowd, the study’s lead researcher.
“In one of our reports, we described that as border crossing in fact, going from one world to another,” says Dowd, who is leaving the University of Massachusetts, Boston to become an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Southern California in the fall.
“Crossing that border between those two different worlds is easier for students who have a guide whether that’s a family guide, or somebody at the community college or at the elite institution who helps them find their way. Families that are already highly educated are better able to guide their students through that process.”
Of all of the nation’s Black undergraduate students, 47 percent attend community colleges; and 56 percent of Hispanics, 48 percent of Asian Americans and 57 percent of American Indian undergraduates do the same, according to statistics from the American Association of Community Colleges.
