| Community College students who transfer to a four-year
college are more likely to earn a bachelor's degree than those who started in a four-year
college, according to a report released this month by the U.S. Department of Education. "That's
pretty impressive," said Clifford Adelman, author of the study and a senior research
analyst at the department's Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
The 124-page work, entitled "Answers in the Toll box: academic intensity,
attendance patterns and bachelor's degree attainment," is built upon the high school
and college transcript records, test scores, and surveys of a national cohort from the
time students were in 10th grade in 1980 until they were roughly 30-years-old
in 1993.
The story gleaned from the study is "surprisingly, new," Adelman said.
It shows that:
- Preparation - the quality of high school curriculum - has a greater correlation to the
attainment of a bachelor's degree than do test scores or class rank.
- The number of undergraduate students attending more than one institution has swelled to
58 percent among bachelor's degree recipients and is still increasing. The portion of
students attending more than two institutions is growing at a faster rate than that for
bachelor's degree recipients attending two institutions.
- Socioeconomic status provides but "a very modest contribution" to eventual
completion of the bachelor's degree once students have passed through their first year of
college.
- The highest level of mathematics studies in secondary school has the "strongest
continuing influence" of all pre-college curricula on bachelor's degree completion.
Finishing a course beyond the level of Algebra2, for example, more than doubles the odds
that a student who enters postsecondary education will complete a bachelor's degree.
The student indicates that one of every five students who began at a community college
and earned more than 10 credits there eventually earned a bachelor's degree. However, that
number "includes a mass of students who never attended a four-year college and had no
intention of doing so."
"Transfer has a positive relationship to degree completion," Adelman said.
"Students in a classic transfer pattern are moving toward a bachelor's degree.
Although students who earned more than 10 credits at a community college and later
transferred to a four-year institution earned bachelor's degrees at a rate higher than
students who began their careers in four-year colleges, "early transfers" did
not. Early transfers - "those who jumped ship from the community college to the
four-year institution with 10 or fewer credits" completed bachelor's degrees at a
much lower rate, 38.4 percent. |
