Community college students are an untapped reservoir of talent and including them in social work education aligns with the values of the profession. Yet these students encounter formidable obstacles on the path from a 2-year degree to an affordable social work degree. In this article, we describe the systems thinking underlying a newly instituted…

Many Virginians aspiring to earn a four-year degree intentionally begin their journey at one of the 23 community colleges within the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). In concert with those aspirations, the VCCS is committed to providing its residents an affordable and accessible program of study that prepares them to transfer and earn a…

TransferBOOST (Bachelor's Opportunity Options that are Straightforward and Transparent) is a multi-year state-level initiative developed to provide students with affordable, quality, well-supported two- to four-year pathways. Affordability matters a great deal for transfer students, but it has typically not been understood or prioritized. The IHEP…

TransferBOOST (Bachelor's Opportunity Options that are Straightforward and Transparent) is a multi-year state-level initiative developed to provide students with affordable, quality, well-supported two- to four-year pathways. On average, 43 percent of credits are lost nationwide through the transfer process. Recognizing that today's students…

TransferBOOST (Bachelor's Opportunity Options that are Straightforward and Transparent) is a multi-year state-level initiative developed to provide students with affordable, quality, well-supported two- to four-year pathways. For every 100 students who enroll in community colleges, 31 students transfer to a four-year institution. Of those, only 15…

Research studies have been ambivalent about whether enrolling in community college makes completing a bachelor's degree less likely than directly enrolling in a four-year institution. This study uses propensity score matching with a posttreatment adjustment to determine the treatment effect associated with taking the community college to four-year…

Objective: Recent studies have shown that community college transfer students are just as likely to graduate with a bachelor's degree as students who directly enroll in a 4-year institution. However, these studies do not typically examine whether there is a penalty for community college students in terms of the length of time it takes to complete…

Rationale: Research examining the relationship between initial community college enrollment and bachelor's completion have shown mixed results with some studies indicating a clear penalty for community college enrollment and other studies showing no penalty, partly due to the point at which the given study began tracking the community college…

Over the past decade, educators and policymakers have sought to increase the number of students pursuing and completing postsecondary credentials. Community colleges play an important role in efforts to increase the percentage of Americans with postsecondary education. Community colleges play an important role in educating the early childhood…

This report examines undergraduate persistence and time to degree at public universities in Illinois, focusing on the year-to-year persistence of cohorts of freshmen students admitted to 10 universities between 1983 and 1993. It also examines the public university graduating class of 1993-94 and describes the factors influencing time to degree. It…

A study was conducted of 66,581 students who initially enrolled in Illinois public community colleges in fall 1980 in either baccalaureate/transfer or occupational programs and who earned a baccalaureate degree from a public university in Illinois by 1989. The study did not include transfer students who did not earn a baccalaureate degree or…

Part of a series of reports on undergraduate education in Illinois, this report focuses on transfer and articulation. The first section examines trends in transfer and after-transfer retention to baccalaureate degree completion of students who transferred from public community colleges to public universities. The second section traces the…

In response to data indicating that states having fewer post-secondary enrollees in two-year colleges had higher baccalaureate attainment, a study was undertaken to examine the possibility that a major state commitment to community colleges in response to demands for access means lower baccalaureate completion rates. The study compared Florida and…