Tracking Transfer: Community College Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor's Degree Attainment

A bachelor's degree is increasingly necessary for securing a job that pays a family-supporting wage, yet while most community college students aspire to transfer and complete a bachelor's degree, too few make it through to this goal. This report, along with the companion report on four-year institutional outcomes, is designed to be used by college, university, and state-system leaders to set clear goals for eliminating disparities and expanding transfer opportunity for all students who start at a community college with the dream of earning a bachelor's degree. The analysis in this report offers several insights into whether transfer pathways from community colleges to four-year institutions are effective for all students. We discuss overall transfer rates and bachelor's completion rates of the 2015 entering cohort of community college students, and further investigate disparities in outcomes for low-income, Black, Hispanic, and older students (students 25 years or older) in comparison to national averages. We also provide a state-by-state look at these outcomes. In a companion report, "Tracking Transfer: Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor's Degree Attainment," we examine what happens to community college students after transferring to a four-year institution by reporting disaggregated measures on the enrollment, retention, and bachelor's completion outcomes of transfer students in the 2015 four-year entering cohort. [The authors acknowledge research for this report was conducted through a partnership between the Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program; the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University; and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Additional funding was provided by Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.]