Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines whether community college "vertical transfer" students who resemble "native four-year" students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and…

Two-year colleges have served as vital stepping-stones for students seeking to earn a bachelor's degree. To achieve that goal, these students must complete their current program's requirements and then matriculate at a four-year college--a process known as "vertical transfer." This is commonly extolled as a cost-saving strategy, but it…

Policymakers have become increasingly concerned with measuring--and holding colleges accountable for--students' labor market outcomes. In this article we introduce a piecewise growth curve approach to analyzing community college students' labor market outcomes, and we discuss how this approach differs from two popular econometric approaches:…

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines how and why the community college pathway to a baccalaureate influences students' degree attainment and short-term labor market performance. We find that the community college pathway sharply reduces the likelihood of earning a bachelor's degree but does not have a significant…