Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many students begin their postsecondary career at community college intending to transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. Yet, few community college students earn a bachelor’s degree. This problem is widespread across postsecondary systems in the United States. For example, according to data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) for the 2003 cohort, three-quarters of students who started college in an associate’s degree program reported that they expected to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher. Yet, six years later, only one-quarter of community college students had transferred to a four-year college and 11 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree.

A key factor shaping transfer student success is the design and implementation of policies and practices that govern the transfer of credits from a two-year to a four-year institution. Research has found that students’ loss of credits when they transfer to a four-year college is a major barrier to bachelor’s degree attainment, and a primary explanation for the lower rates of degree attainment among students who begin college at a two-year institution. As a result, improving policies and practices regarding credit mobility (i.e., the successful transfer of credits) from two-year to four-year colleges could have a direct effect on community college students’ bachelor’s degree attainment. Since community colleges serve disproportionate numbers of first generation and low income college students, improving credit mobility could have a profound and positive impact on improving the postsecondary success of students from historically disadvantaged groups.

This qualitative study investigates issues surrounding credit mobility in ten states:  California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. What are statewide transfer policies?
2. How are the statewide transfer policies implemented?
3. What factors explain students’ successful or challenging transfer experiences?

To understand state policy, we synthesized legislation on transfer to understand official transfer policies in the 10 states. To understand implementation of these policies, we interviewed 34 state/system officials, and 84 college staff across the 10 states, and we visited Tennessee, Texas, and Washington and conducted student focus groups at a community college and neighboring university.

This study presents a new framework for understanding state and system transfer policies that are designed to protect students’ credits, and an analysis of the primary ways community college transfer students are losing credit across these states. Based on our findings, we outline considerations for states regarding improvements to policy and implementation that will ease the transfer process and improve credit mobility for community college students. We also outline what “transfer college knowledge,” or the specific set of skills and knowledge community college students need to be able to successfully transfer to a university and apply most of their community college credits to their four-year degree program, looks like in different states and under different policy environments.