As states have begun to fully implement reverse transfer policies, their reported student-level outcomes data varies widely. Given the infancy of most reverse transfer policy, it is premature to pinpoint any single state action that has served to accelerate or hinder successful degree conferrals. However, taking a deeper look at exemplar state…

Facilitating student transfer from two-year to four-year institutions has been a focus of research and policy in recent years. Much less attention has been given to the phenomenon of four-year to two-year (4-2) college transfer. About 16 percent of students who begin in a four-year college transfer to a two-year college within six years. Using…

The traditional unidirectional ("linear") postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them…

This is the second report on transfer and mobility, examines multiple transfer pathways for the cohort of students who started postsecondary education in 2008. It reveals how student enrollment patterns that involve multiple movements among two or more institutions and across state boundaries has become the new normal, demonstrating the need for a…

Many states are experimenting with mechanisms for making college more affordable while maintaining quality and access. This report examines promising or innovative state programs to improve college affordability and credential attainment. Many of these approaches show innovative thinking and bear watching to see if they result in meaningful…

In its second Signature Report[TM], "Transfer and Mobility: A National View of Pre-Degree Student Movement in Postsecondary Institutions" (Hossler et al., 2012), the National Student Clearinghouse[R] Research Center[TM] found that one-third of all first-time students who began at a four-year institution transferred to or enrolled at a different…

It is widely acknowledged that many postsecondary students no longer follow a traditional path from college entry to degree at a single institution. Increasingly more students attend multiple institutions, transferring once, twice, or even three times before earning a degree. Standard institution-based reporting tends to ignore these students,…

Reducing socioeconomic differences in college transfer requires understanding how and why parental education, occupational class, and family income are associated with changing colleges. Building on prior studies of traditional community college transfer, the authors explore relationships between those factors and two types of transfer among…

The purpose of this descriptive, exploratory study investigates the number of students who hold a bachelor's degree or higher attending Iowa's fifteen community colleges between fiscal years 2006 and 2008. This group of students is referred to as post-baccalaureate reverse transfer (PBRT) students in the literature and in this paper. This study…

The reverse transfer literature contains studies investigating the demographic characteristics of postsecondary students that attended a community college after attending a four-year institution, and their proportion in the community college student population. A few researchers have investigated reverse transfer student motives for enrolling in…

The Commission on Higher Education had a student intern from USC-Columbia initiate an analysis of data on the migration of undergraduate first-time transfers to compare trends, growth, and proportions of transfers to and from various sectors and institution types over a three-year period, from 2006-2008. Staff have refined the analysis and…

The vast majority of high school students plan to attend college--and believe that a bachelor's degree all but guarantees them a high-paying job. What many of them don't know is that those who are not well prepared are not likely to graduate. They also don't realize that plenty of career-focused certificates and associate's degrees lead to…

This article describes how people with bachelor's and even advanced degrees are using two-year colleges as a form of graduate school. It defies the stereotype of community college as a place of last resort, and counters the norm of the first-time college students earning an associate degree and then transferring to a four-year institution. For the…

Reverse transfer has recently become a topic of interest. There are concerns that some university graduates are having a difficult time finding good jobs and are enrolling in community college programs to make themselves competitive in the job market. To assess the extent of reverse transfer, the Commission conducted an analysis combining…

In higher education, the two-year community college serves many roles. Probably the most well-known roles include serving underrepresented populations--those students who are the first in their families to attend college, those whose families don't have the financial means to send their children to a four-year college, and/or those whose academic…