A Tale of Three TrACEs: Effects of an ASAP/ACE Adaptation for Transfer Students on Postsecondary Progress

• In Event: Expanding Opportunity at Community Colleges: Credentials, Transfers, and Supports

Abstract

Among first-time college enrollees starting at four-year public colleges in the fall of 2017, about 67 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree six years later (Lee & Shapiro, 2023).  While appreciable research and policy attention has focused on disparities in bachelor’s degree completion rates across subgroups of students defined by economic background, gender, and race and ethnicity (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011; Reeves & Smith, 2021; Shapiro et al., 2017), relatively less work has focused on disparities in postsecondary success between students who transfer to four-year institutions compared to their peers who start their postsecondary journeys at four-year institutions. 

Students who transfer from two-year to four-year institutions represent a substantial portion of the postsecondary student body. Approximately one in five students at four-year institutions have transferred from community college. However, less than half of such transfer students complete a bachelor’s degree within four years. Our own analyses of the success of transfer students in the public four-year university system of North Carolina found completion rate gaps between transfer and non-transfer students of 33 percentage points in four-year degree attainment and 20 percentage points in five-year completion rates. 

We partnered with a public university system to study the effects of a multipronged program intended to boost transfer student success. The TrACE program targets students moving from two-year colleges to four-year universities in North Carolina, and is adapted from the successful ASAP program, which targeted community college students in New York. TrACE provides hands-on advising coupled with financial supports, links to career and academic services, and incentives to encourage meaningful integration into the social fabric of university life. Students eligible for TrACE at three four-year universities, entering in Fall 2023, were randomly offered the opportunity to participate in the program. Two years after entry, we find mixed effects of TrACE across the three universities on postsecondary outcomes. At University C, TrACE markedly boosted the percentage of students completing a bachelor’s degree within two years of transferring to the institution. At University A, we document moderate increases in performance and attainment, while at University B we find negative effects on persistence and completion. We discuss contextual features of each site that may have influenced the nature of program implementation and thus played a role in the variation in results across the three institutions.

Author

• Steven W. Hemelt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author