Today’s students are more likely than ever to accumulate learning from multiple sources, and many postsecondary institutions have rightly begun to approach credit mobility as the new normal rather than an exception to the rule. Carolynn Lee Senior Program Officer – Streamline Key Learner Transitions Ascendium Education Group
Using Real-time Data to Inform Effective Transfer Policy and Practice
When the COVID-19 health crisis emerged, the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center stood ready to react. They recognized the difficulty of aligning transfer policy and practice even before the crisis and focused their efforts on transfer trends. Transfer plays an essential role in helping learners from low-income backgrounds meet their postsecondary education goals. As NSC Research Center Executive Director Doug Shapiro describes in an interview with Ascendium, accessible transfer pathways are an important component of student success. They allow learners to change institutions as learner needs and circumstances dictate and the world around them continues to transform.
Through a $545,500 grant, the NSC Research Center carried out a two-year project to understand how this disruption impacted transfer trends over time. Regularly released reports provided real-time information to inform stakeholders and provided data that could serve as a baseline for state and institutional policy development. Over time, the NSC Research Center data revealed concerning trends. One, enrollment and persistence rates in community colleges fell. Two, overall transfer rates dropped, with transfers from two- to four-year institutions showing a steep drop in the second year. These trends significantly impact learners from low-income backgrounds, who often begin their postsecondary education in less-expensive two-year institutions and then transfer to four-year institutions to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Supporting strategies that ease the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions is integral to our Streamline Key Learner Transitions grantmaking. Overall, the reports helped stakeholders understand the early impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis and pinpoint some of the chronic barriers to transfer.