Despite the robust literature on the effects of financial aid, the effects of financial aid loss remain largely understudied. We employ a regression discontinuity design, leveraging a minimum GPA scholarship renewal threshold, to examine the effect of losing state merit aid eligibility on college student stop-out, transfer, and bachelor's degree…

Objective: Empirical work explaining student mobility, particularly postsecondary pathways among 2-year college students, remains limited. This study examines the underlying process that drives 2-year college students into one or more pathways as they navigate higher education. Method: Drawing upon survey, transcript, and interview data from one…

Reverse credit transfer policies and programs are proliferating, and this chapter examines their potential and considers ways to measure and collect data on reverse credit transfer.

Reverse credit transfer (RCT) is an emerging policy designed to award associate's degrees to students who transfer from 2-year to 4-year colleges after transfer. The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact of RCT degree receipt on students' university and labor outcomes using data from Texas, where the legislature passed RCT policy in…

In 2014, approximately 7.3 million undergraduate students (42 percent) were enrolled in community colleges in the US, the latest statistic offered by the Community College Research Center. At some schools, like Cleveland State University (OH), more transfer students graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's degree than students who entered four-year…

Objective: International reverse transfer students are international students who begin their postsecondary journey at a four-year institution but subsequently transfer to a community college. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of international reverse transfers to understand the reasons for reverse-transfer and to…

More states are considering what kinds of policies or processes can be put in place to successfully improve the degree attainment of their postsecondary students, and one popular option is a reverse transfer policy. Reverse transfer policies usually involve authorizing community colleges to award a degree or certificate to students that have…

For decades, higher education professionals and researchers have used the term reverse transfer to describe a specific group of students. A current review of community college literature and higher education policy reflects a contextual change of the term, and today reverse transfer has grown to include students who transfer from a two-year…

An increasing number of international Chinese undergraduate students enrolled in United States.colleges and universities in the past few years. Many began their journey in an intensive English program of a four-year university due to lack of English proficiency. Instead of continuing their study at the same institution, a considerable number of…

Postbaccalaureate reverse transfer students (PRTSs) are students that enroll at a community college after completion of at least a bachelor's degree. This study expanded the definition of PRTSs by including students that had completed an associate's degree prior to enrolling at a community college. This report is an exploratory, descriptive study…

In the past several years, reverse credit transfer programs expanded dramatically at the state and regional levels. Policymakers and institutional leaders recognize the potential of reverse credit transfer to contribute to college completion goals and increase the proportion of adults with a postsecondary credential. More importantly, reverse…

Four members of the ACE Fellows Program class of 2010-2011 share the results of their fellowship projects, all of which were based at urban universities. The projects addressed partnerships between the universities and their urban communities in different contexts, including the creation of college-town developments, establishing a center for…

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…

Innovators and entrepreneurs are using technologies to make freely available the things for which universities charge significant money. MOOCs (massive open online courses), free online courses, lecture podcasts, low-cost off-the-shelf general education courses, online tutorials, digital collections of open learning resources, open badges--all are…

College departure involves multiple mobility patterns that include lateral transfer (from a four-year to another four-year institution), reverse transfer (from a four-year to a two-year institution), and stop out (taking time out of higher education altogether). This study addresses how financial aid influences the likelihood of such mobility…