Although community colleges have served as a gateway to universities for millions of students--disproportionately so for students from populations historically underrepresented in higher education--prior research has demonstrated that the majority of vertical transfer students lose at least some of their pretransfer credits. However, researchers…

A growing body of research has documented extensive credit loss among transfer students. However, the field lacks theoretically driven and empirically supported frameworks that can guide credit loss research and reforms. We develop and then test a comprehensive framework designed to address this gap using novel administrative credit loss data from…