Inequality, Nonlinearity, and the College Experience: An Investigation of Reverse Transfer in the American Higher Education System

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Today, nearly one in five students enrolled in public universities reverse transfer (Hossler et al. 2012a). Students from disadvantaged family and academic backgrounds (i.e. low-income, low-achieving, and those with less educated parents) are more likely to reverse transfer than their more advantaged counterparts (Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2007; Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2009; Kalogrides and Grodsky 2011). Reverse transfer students are also less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree when compared to students who stay at four-year institutions (Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2007; Hossler et al. 2012b). Together, these relationships suggest that non-linear college attendance patterns contribute to inequalities in bachelor’s degree attainment with implications for students’ life chances (Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2007; Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2009; Hout 2012). On the other hand, since completing even some college contributes to higher earnings (Kane and Rouse 1995), reverse transfer may simultaneously level inequalities with regard to any college attainment when compared to those who drop out. Currently, we know little about why socioeconomically disadvantaged students are more likely to reverse transfer. I posit that disparate college experiences may mediate the relationship between social background and reverse transfer and that such relationships may vary according to students’ social and academic backgrounds. Additionally, there is a critical unanswered question about whether and how reverse transfer independently affects degree completion at four- and two-year institutions. It is possible that the negative association is mistaken because of selection bias, a misidentified set of counterfactuals, and/or effect heterogeneity. Few of these issues have been addressed in prior studies and I fill this gap by investigating if there is evidence of heterogeneous effects of reverse transfer on degree completion and whether such impacts vary according to which counterfactual is specified.

Author

• Eleonora Hicks, University of Wisconsin - Madison