Improving Community College to University Transfer

Community college to university transfer (i.e., vertical transfer) is an important potential path to a bachelor's degree. However, community colleges may be particularly challenging for students to navigate. In this brief we argue that multiple transfer policies, combined with the complexity of community colleges, create a set of choices that are difficult for students to work through. Second, transfer-related policies may be weak or ineffective if they ignore policy mediators, such as the ways students access information to guide their decisions. We review the growing body of research on vertical transfer in order to make recommendations aimed at improving vertical transfer rates.