Category: Transfer News

Inside Higher Ed featured several articles this past month that discussed topics related to student transfer. 

• The article, Few Students of Defunct For-Profit Chains Have Transferred, examines data shared with lawmakers by the Department of Education on transfer rates of students from defunct for-profit institutions.
• Two opinion pieces, Navigating Academic and Student Affairs for Pathways Success and Guided Pathways Reform, explore guided pathways, advising, and the impact on transfer students.
• The blog, Yes, But: Humanities at Community Colleges, discusses a recently released report from the Community College Research Center which examines how preparation at community college affects transfer and outcomes at four-year colleges.

A recent article, Universities that are recruiting older students often leave them floundering, published in the Hechinger Report examines what institutions are doing to serve non-traditional student who are older, have children, and are transfer students. Read more to find out what is working and what lessons have been learned.

An Inside Higher Ed blog, Strategies for Improving Student Success, discusses eight common sense strategies for improving student success including better ways to serve transfer students. 

The Community College Research Center released a report, American Honors: The Life and Death of a Public-Private Partnership, which examines the role of the public-private partnership and its impact on transfer students. 

A recently released report, Recommendations for Providing Community Colleges with the Resources, from The Century Foundation explores how funding and resource levels at 2-year institutions affects student success and those that transfer.

Inside Higher Ed opinion piece, Community college four-year degrees are smart policy, not mission creep, explores how community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees may better serve transfer students and may address the “racial transfer gap.”

An article, Clearing Transfer Pipelines, in the Community College Journal of the American Association of Community Colleges features a variety of partnerships and consortia working to improve student transfer and completion rates.

An Education Dive article, Four ways community colleges are tackling student success with

fewer resources, examines what community colleges are doing to improve student success including how they are working to help students transfer to a four-year institution.

A recent article, ‘A Scramble to Keep Our Promises’: How Colleges Make Teach-Outs Work After Sudden Campus Closures, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education examines how one institution is absorbing transfer students due to a nearby campus closure. Read more to find out what worked and what lessons have been learned.

Last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article, Here’s What Trump’s Executive Order on Free Speech Says, which discusses the key items of the executive order. Interestingly, the order also requires an annual report by the U.S. Secretary of Education on successful State and institutional efforts on student transfer rates and degree completion of transfer students.

An Education Dive article, Colleges list priorities for Higher Education Act Reauthorization, examines recommendations to Congress from The Higher Education Committee of 50 Members on the Higher Education Act reauthorization which includes several recommendations regarding student transfer.

A recent report, Working as a Team for Student Success, released by the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses what institutions are doing to improve student success. One example expands on how collaborations across a college campus better serve undergraduate students including the development of faculty and staff teams that focus on transfer students.

An article, The Correlates of Credit Loss: How Demographics, Pre‑Transfer Academics, and Institutions Relate to the Loss of Credits for Vertical Transfer Students, recently published in Research in Higher Education explores how students’ pre-transfer academic characteristics, demographic characteristics, and the institutions they transferred to and from influenced the magnitude of credit loss they experienced.

The Student Transfer Destinations by State website demonstrates transfer patterns of students across all 50 states and territories based on data secured from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC). As the Interstate Passport Network has grown to a nationwide program with 30 members in 12 different states, this site has been expanded to include national transfer student data sets for the 2006, 2008, 2010, and now the 2012 cohorts. The website serves as a dynamic tool to demonstrate, over time, the transfer trends among cohorts, as well as to provide a visual display of where students are transferring to and from across state lines.   In addition, a print/export feature has been added which allows viewers to print and export figures as data is viewed on the site. “We are excited to add the 2012 cohort data to the website. We can now provide viewers with snapshots of student transfer trends and patterns nationwide over a twelve year period. It is our goal, as new data becomes available from NSC for other cohorts to add it and continue to learn more about intrastate and interstate transfer over time,” said Patricia Shea, director of academic leadership initiatives at WICHE where the Interstate Passport’s operations are based.

Inside Higher Ed featured an article, Georgia Perimeter improves graduation and transfer rates after merging with Georgia State, this past month that addressed how institutions are partnering to increase graduation and transfer rates.

Learning communities can improve student transfer rates.   An article, How Learning Communities Can Keep Higher Ed’s Most At-Risk Students on Track, The Chronicle of Higher Education, discusses the role of learning communities with high-risks students including improving transfer rates at insitutions.

The Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group focuses on the partnerships between community colleges and universities in supporting transfer student success and its critical importance in its latest report, Identifying Effective and Equitable Institutions for Transfer Students: Exploring the Contribution of the Pair in Multilevel Models.

A new study, The Benefits of Borrowing, from Education Next finds that community college students who take out student loans get better grades, earn more credits, and are more likely to transfer to four-year colleges than students who do not take out student loans.

Concordia University, St. Paul is the latest institution to join the Interstate Passport Network (Network), coming aboard on January 3, 2019. Established in 1893, Concordia University, St. Paul is a private, comprehensive liberal arts university that offers over 80 programs for students seeking traditional undergraduate, degree completion, graduate, or doctoral degrees. It offers numerous scholarship opportunities for both first-time college students as well as transfer students, and the university has a 94.57% placement rate post-graduation for undergraduate students. Concordia University, St. Paul is located in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is the first private institution and the third beyond the western region to join the Network. The growing Network now encompasses 29 institutions across 11 states and is aiming for comprehensive national coverage. “Concordia University, St. Paul is excited to be the first Minnesota school to become a member of Interstate Passport,” said Dr. Eric LaMott, Concordia University, St. Paul provost. “Interstate Passport aligns with Concordia’s ideals of providing transparency to the transfer credit process and providing more seamless transfer opportunities to students outside the state of Minnesota.”

Education Dive featured two articles this past month that address student transfer. The first article discusses how veterans are underrepresented at top US colleges. The second article examines how transfer students from community colleges fare compared to those who matriculate from high school.

• Enrolling More Veterans at High-Graduation-Rate Colleges and Universities explores barriers including transfer policies that may prevent veterans from enrolling and discusses strategies to address these barriers.

• According to a new report, Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer from Community Colleges to Selective Four-Year Institutions, students transferring from a community college to a four-year institution are equally or more likely to graduate in six years than students transitioning from high school.

A recent article, How one California community college allows students to skip remedial English, in Ed Source discusses how one community college is removing hurdles to transfer to four-year institutions for its students. These changes aim to push more students to graduate on time.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education a recent article, Inside the UC System’s New Focus on Transfer Students, discusses strategies being employed by the University of California System to increase the number of transfer students in its total student population.

Inside Higher Ed featured two articles this past month that address student transfer. The first article discusses findings in the most recent report on college completion rates from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The second article examines policy plans from the U.S. Department of Education.

• National College Completion Rate Continues to Rise

The report regarding the 2012 student cohort discusses findings that completion rates for transfer students from two-year to four-year institutions increased 1.1 percentage points, to 15.8 percent.

• DeVos Outlines ‘Rethinking’ of Higher Education

Secretary DeVos and U.S. Education Department officials today outline plans for looming accreditation reform negotiation, describing focus on credit transfer and credential inflation.