Great Expectations Deferred: Contextualizing Transfer Intentions in a Southwestern Community College

• In Event: 125 - Section on Teaching and Learning in Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 02. Online Intentions

Abstract

This study examines the character and change in transfer intentions of students from community colleges to four-year institutions in New Mexico. Since the early 1970s, national transfer achievement rates have declined in spite of high transfer aspirations resulting in a widening national transfer aspiration-achievement gap. Given that initial expectations are often unmet, I study how the students’ development and maintenance of transfer intentions may partly account for the gap. This project, designed as an inductive descriptive study, pursues one central research question: What does transferring mean to students? This question elicits more inquiry: How does a student’s intention to transfer vary due to underlying socio-cultural processes? Further, do these processes differ in nature or outcome when accounting for different intersections of gender, race and ethnicity, or socio-economic status? Beginning with insights gained from two social capital indicators and three cultural capital indicators, I found diminishing (and heightening) of transfer intentions associated with these five socio-cultural processes, along with other unexpected processes that emerged during the course of my research. My primary finding is that student transfer intentions behave dynamically, are more fragile and recently-formed than expected, and exhibit outcome patterns linked to social and cultural experiences while at the community college. These experiences, as colored by the students’ accounts, feature interactions of identity and student culture, emotional and morale support, differing “comfort-levels,” and the delicate interplay of financial, family and educational priorities.

Author

• Thomas Milton Maestas, University of Montreal