Information Tools and Successful Transfer: Transfer Explorer and the Transfer Scorecard

• In Event: Policy Levers for Community College Mobility: New Evidence on Access, Transfer, and Equity

Abstract

College student transfer from one higher education institution to another has been notoriously unsuccessful in the United States. In particular, approximately 80% of community college students have a goal of receiving a bachelor’s degree, which usually requires transferring to a bachelor's college (vertical transfer). However, only about 16% of community college students receive a bachelor’s degree within six years of beginning community college. Given that community colleges tend to have a higher percentage of students from underrepresented groups than do bachelor’s colleges, the low vertical transfer success rates represent a lack of higher education equity. Many researchers, administrators, and practitioners have sought to identify, not only the reasons for the low vertical transfer success rates, but also policies and practices that will increase the rates. Such efforts have often pointed to lack of degree-applicable credit transfer as a major barrier to transfer student success. Attempted solutions have involved asking groups of faculty from multiple institutions to agree on how credits should transfer, and/or the construction of articulation agreements (contracts between institutions guaranteeing how credits will transfer), and/or legislative mandates regarding credit transfer. However, these solutions have proven time consuming, short-lived, controversial, and/or applicable to small percentages of potential transfer students. Another strategy is to provide everyone with easily accessible information regarding transfer processes, thus enabling students and those who support them to make better transfer-related choices, enabling the promotion of standardized transfer policies, and enabling public pressure on institutions to facilitate transfer. In this presentation examples will be given of such information tools currently being used by the City University of New York (CUNY) including: open-access information regarding how credits transfer and apply to degree programs (using the CUNY Transfer Explorer website), open-access information regarding the length of the transfer acceptance process (using the CUNY Transfer Explorer website), and information regarding the relative success rates of different transfer paths (using the new CUNY Transfer Scorecard).

Author

• Alexandra W. Logue
  Presenting Author