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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Community colleges play a critical role in advancing postsecondary opportunities. But students’ pathways through and beyond community colleges remain substantially shaped by unequal access to institutions and information, barriers in the transfer pathway, and faculty practices. This proposed panel includes four papers that demonstrate how access to community colleges, interventions for students and instructors, and information tools shape students’ academic success and economic opportunity.The panel begins with the broadest level of access: whether students can reasonably reach a community college in the first place. “Gendered Returns to Community College Access” uses administrative data on Texas public high school graduates to examine how limited geographic access to community colleges shapes postsecondary enrollment and long-run labor market outcomes. The findings show that reduced access to community colleges is related to lower college enrollment and divergent earnings consequences for male and female students, underscoring the role of community colleges in expanding equitable economic opportunity.Building from access to community colleges to access across institutions, the second paper “From Cross-Enrollment to Transfer” examines the impact of expanding community college students’ access to four-year coursework on transfer outcomes. This student-level randomized controlled trial was designed to encourage cross-enrollment by community college students at a public four-year university in California. The intervention addressed informational, procedural, and financial barriers by providing accessible information about cross-enrollment, direct support, and financial assistance for course-related expenses. Preliminary findings suggest that, although the intervention only had modest effects on cross-enrollment, the intervention increased subsequent four-year enrollment, suggesting that broadening students’ knowledge of possible transfer destinations may support transfer progress.The third paper extends the discussion of access by highlighting a policy-relevant tool designed to make transfer pathways more transparent and easier to navigate. The project “Information Tools and Successful Transfer: Transfer Explorer and the Transfer Scorecard” showcases how open-access information tools at the City University of New York can support transfer decision-making. By making transfer-credit applicability, processing timelines, and transfer pathway outcomes more visible to students, advisors, and institutions, these tools have the potential to function as a policy lever to support transfer. Finally, the panel turns from access to classroom processes that directly shape student success and equity outcomes. The fourth paper “College Faculty Implicit Bias and Students’ Degree Attainment” presents experimental evidence from three community colleges on the effects of faculty participation in unconscious bias training. In a randomized controlled trial involving 618 faculty and 12,253 students, the study evaluates whether an intervention designed to raise awareness about teaching and advising biases can improve student outcomes. The findings suggest that the intervention increased degree attainment for Black male and White female students within two years, and provides evidence that the intervention may have operated through changes in faculty behavior. These papers offer new evidence on how student success is shaped by access to colleges and courses, the design of transfer systems, and the instruction students encounter. The panel speaks directly to current policy debates and highlights multiple levers through which policymakers and institutions can build more equitable postsecondary systems.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Michal Kurlaender, University of California, Davis

Discussant

• Florence Xiaotao Ran, University of Delaware

Organizer

• XunFei Li, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Gendered Returns to Community College Access - Presenting Author: Riley Kaitlin Acton, Bowdoin College

• From Cross-Enrollment to Transfer: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in California Community Colleges - Presenting Author: XunFei Li, University of California, Irvine

• Information Tools and Successful Transfer: Transfer Explorer and the Transfer Scorecard - Presenting Author: Alexandra W. Logue

• College Faculty Implicit Bias and Students’ Degree Attainment - Presenting Author: Lena Shi, University of California, Irvine