Anyone who looks at transfer rates from community colleges would be well advised to be prepared for dismal reading.
Dr. Arthur M. Cohen, the head of the ERIC Community College
Clearing House, hads kept a careful watch on transfers for several
decades. He says the rates hover around 22 or 23 percent, depending on
the year.
But first he had to figure out what a transfer was.
“The first thing we did [was] to take a number of credit hours,”
says Alison Bernstein, vice president of the Ford Foundation, which
funded Cohen’s transfer study. “Any community college student who
finished twelve hours was potentially a transfer student.”
Bernstein explains that this step eliminated most students who had
taken just a few courses for training, continuing education, or
vocational purposes.
“And then we ask the question, what percentage of the students who
have done at least twelve credit hours in one year have transferred?”
she explains.
That is the criteria Cohen used to come up with percentages. But
even given those criteria, transfer rates from community colleges are
notoriously difficult to measure, in part because so many community
college students do not fit standard college-going patterns.
