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California has established significant goals for postsecondary attainment, with the stated aim of having 70\u00a0percent of working-age adults hold a credential of value by 2035. To meet this goal, the state has invested time and resources into the community college system and upward transfer processes, seeking to create affordable and accessible pathways in and through higher education. <\/p>\n
A recently published report by the Public Policy Institute of California Higher Education Center found that a large share of community college students are applying to and enrolling in state universities to complete a bachelor\u2019s degree, but equity gaps persist among certain demographic groups. <\/p>\n
The data highlights the importance of focusing on early benchmarks of academic progress\u2014including credit completion rates, GPA and the stated goal of transfer\u2014to help students succeed in making the transition to a four-year university. The report also underscores that some transfer students are willing to pay more and travel farther to attend a more selective institution. <\/p>\n
The background: <\/strong>California\u2019s public higher education system is the largest and most diverse in the country, the report authors note. The California Community College system includes 116 institutions enrolling over 2.1\u00a0million students, and the California State University system consists of 22 institutions educating nearly half a million students. Within the state, the system is the top destination for upward transfer, with 58\u00a0percent of community college students going on to enroll at a CSU campus. <\/p>\n Over the past decade, the two college systems have partnered to streamline transfer opportunities. One innovation is the associate degree for transfer (A.D.T.), a group of 40 academic pathways that guarantee admission to students who complete 60 credits toward a bachelor\u2019s degree in a specific major. Another is the CSU Transfer Planner, which provides insights for students to navigate transferable credits, degree programs and campus requirements for transfer. <\/p>\n The report looks at student demographic information, academic progress and participation in transfer pathways such as A.D.T. to identify success indicators in the transfer pipeline. <\/p>\n Researchers analyzed data from the CSU Application and Admission Dashboard and longitudinal student-level data from fall 2018 and fall 2023. <\/p>\n In the sample, 48\u00a0percent of transfer applicants were Latino, 26\u00a0percent white, 15\u00a0percent Asian and 4.5\u00a0percent Black. A majority were 24 years old or younger, and 75\u00a0percent received a California Promise Grant or a Pell Grant while in community college. <\/p>\n The data: <\/strong>The average student spends nine semesters at a community college before applying to a CSU institution, researchers found. <\/p>\n Students are required to complete 60 credits to transfer with junior-level standing, but the median student completed 71.5 credits. Only half of applicants had earned an A.D.T. before applying, and 22\u00a0percent earned a local associate degree, meaning about 30\u00a0percent of students applied for transfer without a credential. <\/p>\n Researchers noted that students who made significant progress in their first year of community college were more likely to transfer. Those who successfully completed transfer-level math in their first year applied to CSU after seven terms on average, whereas student who didn\u2019t applied after 10 community college terms. <\/p>\n Students who were 25 or older, Black or financial aid recipients were less likely to meet early milestones and therefore less likely to transfer. Conversely, students with high GPAs were more likely to transfer. <\/p>\n The data also indicated a gap between students eligible for admission at a CSU and those who actually applied. One in five students who completed an A.D.T. never applied to CSU despite having guaranteed admission. Of those, 43\u00a0percent enrolled at a different university, many in the University of California system. <\/p>\n In total, 87\u00a0percent of A.D.T. recipients declared a transfer goal while at community college, but approximately 20\u00a0percent of them didn\u2019t continue on to a bachelor\u2019s degree program. <\/p>\n A majority (92\u00a0percent) of all transfers were eventually admitted to at least one CSU, and 63\u00a0percent of all transfers enrolled. Three in 10 applied more than once, and almost half of them (47\u00a0percent) had their application denied the first time. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is possible that these students were initially rejected from the campus of their choice (or to all campuses), took more community college classes, and then gained admission,\u201d researchers wrote. On the flip side, a large share of those whose transfer applications were rejected applied only once (88\u00a0percent), and to only one campus (61\u00a0percent). <\/p>\n Admissions data also revealed the importance of academic benchmarks early in the student\u2019s community college career. Admission rates for students who took transfer-level math or English in their first year were higher compared to their peers who did not; similarly, students who earned 24 transferable credits were more likely to gain admission to a CSU. Unsurprisingly, students who stated a transfer goal, completed the A.D.T. or had a GPA of 3.25 or higher also had high admittance rates. <\/p>\n One trend researchers noted is that students who were admitted to a CSU but chose to enroll at a different institution were more likely to select a college that was farther away or more expensive, indicating that cost and proximity are not deciding factors. Transfers also enrolled at more selective colleges compared to their peers who opted to enroll at CSU, though some students selected universities with lower graduation rates than CSU. <\/p>\n Over all, transfer students had high graduation rates. Among the incoming fall 2020 cohort, 76\u00a0percent graduated with their bachelor\u2019s degree in four years, and 69\u00a0percent completed it in three years. About 19\u00a0percent of students left the CSU system without graduating three years after enrolling, and these students were more likely to be Black, Latino, male or older or have financial need. <\/p>\n Recommendations: <\/strong>Based on their findings, researchers identified three opportunities for improvement: <\/p>\n California has established significant goals for postsecondary attainment, with the stated aim of having 70\u00a0percent of working-age adults hold a credential of value by 2035. To meet this goal, the state has invested time and resources into the community college system and upward transfer processes, seeking to create affordable and accessible pathways in and through<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[667,535,534,16405,3364],"class_list":{"0":"post-31106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-college","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-improving","12":"tag-transfer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Methodology <\/h4>\n
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