Boosting student transfers from community colleges to four-year institutions is a matter of getting all the right policies and programs in place.
Once a high school dropout, Hamilton Cunningham beat the odds in navigating the transition from earning a GED, serving in the U.S. Air Force, and attending community college to enrolling at Howard University in fall 2007 as a sophomore where he is now a Truman Scholar and a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation undergraduate transfer scholarship recipient. Cunningham, who is Black, credits participation in the Leadership Academy, a Black male-oriented academic support program at Georgia Perimeter Community College where he attended, for guidance from program mentors who motivated him to consider transferring to a four-year institution.
“It was the exposure to teachers at Georgia Perimeter and the mentors in the Leadership Academy that got me thinking I could go on and continue my education,” says Cunningham, an economics major in his junior year who plans to attend graduate school.
While Cunningham’s story, and others similar to his, endorse the community college role in expanding the pool of bachelor’s degree earners, it also points to why two-year institutions may need to strengthen their student support programs to increase overall degree completion and transfer rates. As first-generation college attendees, capable students, such as Cunningham, benefit substantially from extensive counseling and guidance programs, often making the difference in whether they persist, graduate, and transfer to four-year schools.
Nearly 60 percent of students entering fouryear institutions earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, but only 31 percent of public community college students go on to complete either an associate or a bachelor’s degree in six years, according to U.S. Education Department data. With community colleges typically lagging in degree completion rates in comparison to four-year institutions, educators and administrators at community colleges can be expected to seek federal help aimed at student support stemming from the Obama administration’s announced commitment to spur higher rates of degree completion across U.S. higher education.
A Clear Path
While states have developed statewide programs to ease student transition from twoyear to four-year schools, the U.S. Department of Education has reported that only 26 percent of U.S. community college students transfer to four-year institutions. In California, researchers Dr. Nancy Shulock and Colleen Moore found that only 15 percent of Black students, compared to 18 percent of Hispanic, 27 percent of White and 33 percent of Asian American students, earned a certificate or degree, transferred to a four-year institution or achieved a combination of successful outcomes within six years of enrolling in a California community college.
