Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The community college transfer route to earning a bachelor’s degree offers students the opportunity to earn college credit for substantially lower tuition at the community college, which they can subsequently transfer and build upon toward the completion of a bachelor’s degree. For many, the cost-savings of starting their undergraduate education at a community college is a major factor in their college choice. Yet, given that inefficiencies in the credit transfer process can thwart student progress toward baccalaureate completion (Monaghan & Attewell, 2014), to what extent and for whom does this discount work as intended? In this paper we use data from two state systems including six years of term-by-term, course-level information with matching student demographics and degree records on entering cohorts of students at each state’s public two- and four-year institutions. First we estimate the costs of earning a bachelor’s degree among students who start at community college compared to those who start at a four-year institution. We then estimate the cost of inefficient transfer— defined by the number of excess credits and credits not accepted toward a major— in order to ascertain for whom and to what extent inefficient credit transfer diminishes the cost-savings of earning a bachelor’s degree via the community college transfer pathway. Finally, we compare findings across two states.