Building Indicators of Community College Outcomes.

In 1989, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges began a project to define and promote student transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges and universities. The project had four purposes: establish a definition of transfer; gather and analyze transfer data from a broad sample of colleges; assist the colleges in establishing continuing procedures for assessing transfer rates; and disseminate information so that all colleges could begin using consistent definitions and collecting uniform data on transfer. The first year of the project was dedicated primarily to establishing a definition and a set of procedures so that the data on transfer could be collected uniformly and so that the colleges would be encouraged to participate. During the second year of the project the definition of transfer rate was stabilized in its most valid, readily understood form. To collect data for the study, the presidents of the 240 colleges in the nation whose student population included at least 20% ethnic minorities were invited to participate in the study. In the first year of the study, 47 colleges participated; and 114 supplied data for the second year of the project. Participating colleges were asked to indicate the number of students entering in the fall of a given year with no prior college experience, the number of those entrants who obtained at least 12 college credit units within 4 years, and the number of the 12-unit attainers who had matriculated at a university within 4 years of leaving the community college. Data were further subdivided by ethnic categories. The data provided indicated that approximately one-half of the entrants with no prior college experience completed at least 12 semester units at the college, and of those, approximately one-fourth transferred. The data also revealed a difference in transfer rates between ethnic minorities. (JMC)