New Report: College Student Transfers Declined By Nearly 300,000 During Pandemic

College student transfers plummeted during the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping by 296,200 transfer students, or 13.5%, according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC), the latest installment in its COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress Report series.

The findings are based on an analysis of schools that represent 89.9% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions, enrolling more than 13 million undergraduate students, including 2 million transfer students, during the 2021-22 academic year.

In academic year 2019-20, nearly 2.2 million college students transferred to another higher education institution. In academic year 2020-21, the first year of the pandemic, transfer losses totaled nearly 200,000 fewer students, or a loss of 9.1%. In the pandemic’s second year, academic year 2021-22, the decreases eased a bit, but 97,200 more transfer students were lost, equalling a 4.9% decline.

The transfer loss following two years of the pandemic, was more than twice as great as the enrollment loss of non-transfer students, which dropped 6.3%, roughly 590,600 students during the same period.

Another discouraging finding was that overall post-transfer persistence rates (i.e., staying enrolled for the subsequent term after transferring) slipped nationally from 80.7% (pre-pandemic) to 80.4 % (year 1) to 80.3% (year 2) for those transferring in fall term, and from 70.7% (pre-pandemic) to 69.8% for spring-term transfers. In year 2 there were a few signs of recovery in persistence among younger students (20 or younger), men, bachelor’s degree-seeking students, and at private nonprofit four-year institutions.

Types of Transfer

Student mobility between institutions can occur in three directions, and while every type of transfer saw losses during the pandemic, the rates of decline differed among them.

• Reverse transfers, in which four-year students transfer into two-year colleges, showed a large decrease of 18.0% or 66,900 fewer students.
• Lateral transfers, where students transfer from one two-year college to another or between four-year universities, was also down sharply. The lateral transfer fall-off was 21.3% or 113,300 fewer students transferring between two-year colleges. Lateral transfers among four-year students decreased by 7.6%, equating to a loss of 29,900 students.
• Upward transfers, where students transfer from a two year college to a four-year institution, was off by 9.7%, a decline of 86,000 students.

Types of Students

Decreased transfers were seen among all types of students.

• Age. Transfers by students older than age 20 declined at more than twice the rate of younger students (-16.2% vs. -7.2% for those 20 or younger); older students accounted for 85% of the total two-year decline in transfer enrollment.
• Gender. Transfer enrollment decreased by 15.6% for men (139,000 fewer students) since the pandemic, a slightly greater rate of decline than the 12.2% loss among women (153,000 fewer students). Transfers by men declined more in pandemic year 1, while transfers by women dropped more in year 2.
• Race/ethnicity. White student transfers declined by 16.4% (163,100 students). Transfers by Black students was down by 16.4% (54,800 students). Native American transfer enrollments decreased 15.6% (3,100 students). Latinx transfer students declined by 6.1% (10,000 students), and Asian student transfers were down 3.4% (1,800 students).

Looking just at upward transfers, white (13.6%) and Black students (13.9%) declined at close to the same rates, substantially higher than the decreases in upward transfers among Latinx (6.1%) and Asian (3.4% ) students.

Upward transfers into highly selective four-year institutions held up somewhat better, with a 6.3% decline for Whites, a 4.6% decline among Blacks, a 4.3% drop off among Latinx, and a 9.1% increase for Asian students.

Types of Institutions

The report also looked at transfers by differing types of institutions, categorized by the specific populations of students they served.

• Rural-serving institutions were affected less severely than non-RSIs over the last two years (-51,900 students, -11.1% for RSIs vs. -225,800 students, -15.4% for non-RSIs).
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities transfer enrollment declined during the pandemic by 4.2% (1,000 students). However, transfer enrollment actually grew during pandemic year 2 (1,700 more students, a 7.7% increase), reversing an 11.1% decline in year 1 (2,700 fewer students).
• Hispanic Serving Institutions experienced a steep 16.9% loss of transfers during the pandemic (102,400 students).

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This two-year retrospective reveals some of the enrollment consequences from the multiple difficulties involved in transferring between colleges during the pandemic. Transfer can be a confusing and frustrating task during the best of times, but it appears to have become a daunting challenge, full of obstacles and impediments during the worst of the nation’s Covid-19 outbreak.

NSCRC leaders concluded that colleges and universities need to use these data to design the support services that transfer students are likely to need the most. “Many pandemic impacts will take years to work their way through the system, continuing to alter learners’ educational trajectories and institutions’ enrollment pipelines long after the pandemic ends,” said Doug Shapiro, NSCRC’s Executive Director, in the Center’s news release. “Today’s missing transfer students will too often become tomorrow’s missing graduates unless educators and policy makers respond quickly with interventions tailored to the needs of affected learners.”

About NSCRC

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.