Community College Transfers To Four-Year Colleges Tumbled Almost 8% Last Fall

The number of students transferring from two-year colleges to four-year institutions declined by 7.5% in fall 2022 compared to the previous year, according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC).

The just-released Transfer and Progress: Fall 2022 Report also revealed that all types of college transfers combined dropped by 2.3% in 2022, resulting in an overall 6.9% decrease in transfer students since fall 2020.

The new report covers 11.5 million undergraduate students without a prior bachelor’s degree who were enrolled in fall 2022 in institutions representing about 89.0% of those in the NSCRC universe of reporting schools. Here are a few of the highlights.

Types of Transfer

Student mobility between institutions can occur in three directions, and the direction and rates of change among the three pathways differed considerably in fall 2022.

• Reverse transfers, in which four-year students transfer into two-year colleges, showed a slight increase of 1% or 1,700 more students.
• Lateral transfers, where students transfer from one two-year college to another or between four-year universities, also saw modest gains. The lateral transfer increase was a slight .3% (about 600 more students) between two-year colleges. Lateral transfers among four-year students increased by 2.0%, equating to a gain of 6,000 students.
• Upward transfers, by far the largest category of transfers, where students transfer from a two year college to a four-year institution, was off 7.5%, a decline of 37,600 students. Since the fall of 2020, upward transfers are now down by 14.5%, or about 78,500 students.

Upward transfers declined the most at highly selective four-year institutions

Upward transfers decreased at all selectivity levels of four-year institutions. The declines were steepest for students transferring to highly selective institutions (-13.4%), but they also decreased by 8.5% at very competitive admissions schools, 7.4% at competitive schools, and 12.2% at less selective colleges. In addition, students who earned an associate degree before transferring declined more than those without a prior associate degree (-12.7% and -4.9%, respectively).

Upward transfers by students attending urban and suburban community colleges fell the most sharply in fall 2022, down 8.8% and 11%, respectively, while transfers by students from community colleges in rural areas increased slightly (1.4%).

Most transfer students change their major

More than half of all transfer students changed their major when moving to another institution (53.9%). In fall 2022, 82.0% of transfers with a liberal arts major changed that major when they transferred compared to 55.7% for non-liberal arts majors.

Change of major was even more common among upward transfers. Nine of ten changed their major upon transferring from a community college to a four-year institution (90.5%), compared to 88% of lateral four-year transfers and roughly 59% for reverse transfers and lateral two-year transfers. The NSCRC attributed much of this high change rate to the fact that transfer-seeking community college starters who don’t have a declared major are often defaulted to a liberal arts major until they transfer to a four-year college.

Additional Findings

The new report also includes data about the percentage of community college students who completed their degrees, and it provides a new socioeconomic breakdown of enrollment and transfer patterns using a census-based, proxy measure of students’ income background. Here are some key findings:

• The report tracked six community college cohorts, three starting in pre-pandemic fall terms (2014, 2015, and 2016) and three during the pandemic (2019, 2020, 2021) . The size of pre-pandemic beginning cohorts was consistently around one million students, but the pandemic-impacted 2020 cohort decreased by 17.1% or about 166,700 students from 2019. Students from the bottom quintile in the U.S. household income distribution were hit twice as hard (-22.7%) as students in the top quintile (-11%). In 2021, the community college entering cohort rebounded slightly (2.1%), but it was not enough to return to pre-pandemic numbers.
• One bit of good news was that the pandemic had little impact on the six-year completion rate of baccalaureate degrees earned by the community college cohorts that began in 2014 (32.8%), 2015 (34.5%), or 2016 (34.9%). The fact that degree completions did not drop for the 2016 entering cohort, even when the worst of the pandemic was taking place during their 5th and 6th years of enrollment, the time when community college starters typically finish their bachelor’s degrees, was heartening.
• In fall 2022, more than half (51.2%) of all traditional age college undergraduates came from higher income backgrounds (the top 40% of U.S. household incomes). According to the report, this share has been steadily rising over time. In addition, lower-income students experienced the steepest enrollment declines during the pandemic (-10.8% or 225,200 fewer students from fall 2019).
• Students from the most affluent 20% of U.S. households dominated the upward and lateral transfer pathways into the most selective four-year institutions in the country, accounting for almost half of them. By contrast, students from the lowest income quintile make up no more than 5.0% of either upward or lateral transfers into these colleges.
• The shares of transfer students from lower income quintiles increase steadily as the selectivity of the destination institution decreases, with the share of the lowest quintile among upward transfers to less-selective institutions standing at 14.1%, nearly triple that of the lowest quintile transferring to highly selective institutions.

“Unlike the stabilization that we saw in the general enrollment numbers last month, the number of students who transferred in fall 2022 is continuing the downward slide it has been on since the pandemic began in 2020, and this is especially true for upward transfers,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, in a press release. “It is very encouraging, however, that among those who transferred from community colleges into four-year schools six years ago, students are now completing bachelor’s degrees at higher rates than before, despite the disruptions of the pandemic.”

About the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations to gather accurate longitudinal data that can be used to guide educational policy decisions. NSCRC analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represented 97% of the nation’s postsecondary enrollment in Title IV degree-granting institutions in the U.S., as of 2020.

The new report series, which combines two types of earlier transfer reports by NSCRC, received financial support from the Ascendium Education Group and the Institute of Education Sciences through a grant to Teachers College, Columbia University.