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Abstract

Approximately 30% of students who enter the postsecondary education system do so through 2-year colleges. The majority of these students intend to earn a bachelor's degree, but most leave college before earning a diploma from a 4-year institution. The discrepancy between bachelor's degree aspirations and degree attainment rates of students who enter through 2-year colleges suggests that vertical transfer students—those who transfer from 2- to 4-year colleges—face unique obstacles to academic performance and retention that affect their likelihood of earning a bachelor's degree. Similar barriers exist for economically disadvantaged students, who may be more likely to enter the postsecondary education system through 2-year colleges. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on factors influencing economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students' academic performance in the first year posttransfer and retention between the first and second year posttransfer. Implications for 2- and 4-year institutions and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Keywords

vertical transfer community college retention academic performance transfer students

Given the short- and long-term benefits of earning a bachelor's degree, college enrollment has become an increasingly common path for young people entering adulthood in the United States (NCES, 2019a). Bachelor's degree holders report lower rates of unemployment, higher income, civic engagement, happiness, and better physical health (Abel & Deitz, 2014; Hout, 2012). Thus, degree completion at a 4-year institution (i.e., earning a Bachelor's degree) makes important contributions to adulthood well-being (Haveman & Smeeding, 2006). Many students, however, do not enter directly into 4-year institutions, instead enrolling initially at 2-year colleges with the goal of ultimately transferring to a 4-year institution. Students who do transfer from 2-year to 4-year colleges, with or without earning their associate degree first, are referred to as vertical transfer students (Townsend, 2001).

In the fall of 2019, approximately six million students in the United States were enrolled in 2-year institutions (i.e., community colleges; NCES, 2019a). The vast majority of these students plan to eventually transfer to a 4-year institution, yet there is a large discrepancy between the number of 2-year students who aspire to attain a bachelor's degree and the number who ultimately do. Of the 80% of students enrolled in 2-year colleges who aspire to attain a bachelor's degree, 25% transfer to a 4-year college within 5 years of entering the postsecondary system, but only 17% of vertical transfer students ultimately earn a bachelor's degree (Jenkins & Fink, 2015). Indeed, research has shown that students who begin at 2-year colleges are 14.5% less likely to earn a bachelor's degree within 9 years of enrollment than peers who enter directly into 4-year colleges, even after accounting for factors related to selection into 2- and 4-year colleges, such as race/ethnicity, gender, age, family income, and standardized test scores (Long & Kurlaender, 2009). Another study of eight cohorts of first-year students at a large, public 4-year college found that the 6-year attrition rate for vertical transfer students was 23.5%, compared to 20.9% for those who entered directly into the 4-year college (Aulck & West, 2017).

There is similarly a persistent gap in bachelor's degree attainment between students from lower and higher income backgrounds (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011; Snyder et al., 2016). Despite reporting similar degree aspirations as their higher income peers (Ruiz Alvarado et al., 2020; Walpole, 2003), students from lower income backgrounds are less likely to enroll in college after high school graduation than students from higher income backgrounds (61% and 87%, respectively; Cahalan et al., 2018). Among ninth-grade students whose families were in the bottom quintile of socioeconomic strata, only 32% persisted either to college graduation or were still enrolled 3 years after entering college, compared to 79% of students from families in the top quintile (NCES, 2018). Students from lower income backgrounds also spend less time per week studying and more time working than their peers (Martin, 2015; Walpole, 2003), highlighting a few of the potential barriers to degree completion economically disadvantaged students face.

It is unclear exactly how many vertical transfer students in the United States experience economic disadvantage, but trends in community college enrollment indicate there is likely considerable overlap in the population of students from lower income backgrounds and those who enter the postsecondary system through 2-year colleges. Recent reports find that as many as 50% of students enrolled at public 2-year institutions are either living in poverty or near poverty (as defined by federal poverty thresholds), which has grown from 32% in 1996 (Fry & Cilluffo, 2019), supporting the notion that 2-year colleges enroll a disproportionately large number of low-income students (AACC, 2020; Schudde & Goldrick-Rab, 2015). Research has consistently found that vertical transfer students and economically disadvantaged students are more likely to experience academic difficulties while in college, as indicated by lower grade point average (GPA) (Bailey et al., 2005; Carlan & Byxbe, 2000; Glass & Harrington, 2010; Walpole, 2003; Xu et al., 2018) and are also more likely to leave college without a degree (Aulck & West, 2017; Jenkins & Fink, 2015; NCES, 2018; Williams et al., 2018). Nationally, lower income students who begin at community colleges are less likely to transfer to 4-year institutions than higher income peers (24% vs. 40%, respectively) and are also less likely to attain a bachelor's degree within 6 years (10% vs. 21%, respectively; Shapiro et al., 2020). Furthermore, vertical transfer students often identify the costs of attending college as a major obstacle to successful transfer (Ogilvie & Knight, 2019), suggesting that the transfer process may be particularly challenging for economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students.

Accordingly, it may be that economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students experience heightened risk for academic difficulties and dropout, however, little work has focused specifically on this subpopulation of students. When taking into account the strong, positive relationship between degree attainment and indicators of well-being in adulthood (e.g., employment, civic engagement, physical and mental health; Hout, 2012), it appears that the students who stand to benefit greatly from earning a bachelor's degree are least likely to reach this milestone. The purpose of this scoping review is to synthesize research about economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of individual-level risk and protective factors associated with their success at 4-year institutions.

Methodology

Scoping reviews involve “the synthesis and analysis of a wide range of research and non research material to provide greater conceptual clarity about a specific topic or field of evidence” (Davis et al., 2009, p. 1386), and therefore focus more on breadth rather than depth in coverage of the literature (Davis et al., 2009; Rumril et al., 2010). Arksey and O’Malley (2005) outline four reasons to conduct a scoping review: (1) as a rapid review examining the range and nature of a body of research, (2) as a preliminary step in conducting a full systematic review to assess the value of conducting a systematic review, (3) “to summarize and disseminate research findings … to policy makers, practitioners and consumers who might otherwise lack time or resources to undertake such work themselves,” and (4) to help identify gaps in the existing body of research (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005, p. 21). Given the recommendation to disaggregate transfer student samples in future research because transfer students are not a homogenous population (Bahr et al., 2013), we used the summarizing and disseminating strategy to inform our search for literature, guided by the following research question: what are the risk and protective factors that influence the posttransfer outcomes of economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students?

Three databases were used to identify relevant theoretical and empirical articles: PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and Google Scholar. The search terms used included: vertical transfer, upward transfer, transfer students, transfer student retention, transfer student persistence, transfer student graduation, socioeconomic status, economic disadvantage, lower income, community college, GPA, academic performance, baccalaureate attainment, and degree attainment. When available, relevant statistics from publicly available national data on college enrollment and graduation were incorporated. We were specifically interested in articles focused on economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students from open-enrollment 2-year colleges to broad-access 4-year colleges and universities (i.e., the most common receiving institution for this population).

Defining Posttransfer Success

Although students' success at 4-year institutions can be defined in a myriad of ways, this scoping review focuses on two leading indicators of students' progress towards bachelor's degree attainment: academic performance and first-to-second year retention. Academic performance is a robust predictor of degree attainment. A one-point increase in college GPA has been found to increase the likelihood of earning a bachelor's degree by 32% (Cabrera et al., 2003) and GPA in the first semester posttransfer is one of the strongest predictors of persistence at the 4-year college (Nadasen & List, 2016). Thus, examining the academic performance of economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students is crucial for understanding outcomes for this population. Some research indicates that vertical transfer students experience a temporary decline in their academic performance immediately after transfer, a phenomenon referred to as “transfer shock” which is thought to primarily affect students during their first semester at the 4-year institution (Glass & Harrington, 2010). However, there is a lack of consensus in the literature regarding the prevalence of transfer shock; while some studies find that students experience a drop in grades during their first semester at a 4-year college compared to their grades at a 2-year college (Carlan & Byxbe, 2000; Glass & Harrington, 2010; Xu et al., 2018), other studies find that vertical transfer students perform equally well as “native” 4-year students (i.e., those who enter directly into 4-year colleges) during their first semesters at a 4-year college (Aulck & West, 2017; Melguizo et al., 2011). Students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds also report experiencing more barriers to academic success, such as higher rates of having a GPA less than or equal to a “B” grade compared to peers (47% vs. 34%; Walpole, 2003) and competing nonacademic demands (e.g., employment, familial responsibilities; Soria et al., 2013). Collectively, this literature suggests that economically disadvantaged students face challenges in college that their higher income peers do not experience, and there is reason to expect the challenges to academic success faced by economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students are two-fold.

We also focus specifically on students' retention between the first and second year of college posttransfer because the summer after the first year at a 4-year college is when the majority of students who leave college do so (Hamilton & Hamilton, 2006; Tinto, 2001). Nationally, 34.6% of students enrolled at 4-year public colleges and 28.3% of students enrolled at 4-year private colleges leave college between the first and second year, either to attend another institution or to pursue other nonacademic opportunities (ACT, 2018). Additional research has shown that students who leave 4-year colleges are enrolled for an average of 2.5 semesters before leaving (Aulck et al., 2016), providing further evidence that the summer between the first and second year of college is when students are at highest risk for leaving college. Unsurprisingly, the inability to afford the direct (i.e., tuition) and indirect (e.g., books, room, and board) costs of college are one of the primary reasons students leave college. This is particularly salient for economically disadvantaged students who may have to work while also attending classes (Choi, 2018; Soria et al., 2013; Tinto, 2001). Even with the availability of financial aid and loans, economically disadvantaged students experience a higher risk for dropout; first-year students enrolled in 4-year institutions who receive financial aid are less likely to be retained between their first and second year of college than peers not receiving financial aid (Williams et al., 2018).

The Role of Community Colleges in the Postsecondary Landscape

Two-year colleges provide students typically underrepresented in higher education, such as first-generation to college, low-income, and racial/ethnic minority students, an entry point into the postsecondary system (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 2011). For example, 53% of first-generation college students enter into 2-year colleges (AACC, 2015), and as many as half of students enrolled in public, 2-year colleges are students of color (Fry & Cilluffo, 2019). Furthermore, considering the rising costs of college tuition (NCES, 2019b), 2-year colleges play an increasingly important role in the postsecondary system as they advertise lower tuition and fees and are more distributed in terms of geographic location, often allowing students to attend college while living with family rather than in on-campus housing. Despite the fact that 2-year colleges receive a disproportionately small amount of federal funding, 46% of students from families in the bottom income quartile attend 2-year colleges (AACC, 2020). As a result, 2-year colleges are seen as one of the primary settings to combat socioeconomic inequalities, with student-level factors beyond academic ability often motivating the decision to enroll in 2- rather than 4-year colleges after high school graduation (Glynn, 2019).

Historically, one of the primary reasons for the establishment of 2-year colleges was to create a transfer pathway for students who did not enter directly into 4-year colleges (Handel & Williams, 2012). This remains true today—one of the important functions 2-year colleges hold in the broader landscape of higher education is preparing students for transfer to 4-year institutions (Roksa & Calcagno, 2008; Xu et al., 2018). This is particularly critical for students from backgrounds typically underrepresented in higher education who may lack the social and/or cultural capital skills that facilitate success within schools that uphold dominant cultural norms, such as predominantly White institutions (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). Social and cultural capital, such as access to college-educated individuals within one's social network and knowledge about the landscape of higher education acquired from one's family, are known to contribute positively to college persistence at all levels (Wells, 2008a). Research has shown that the probability of first-to-second-year persistence for students who enter with high and low sociocultural capital differs less at the 2-year level than at the 4-year level (Wells, 2008b), making 2-year colleges ideal entry points for these students. Thus, 2-year colleges may provide students who enter with lower levels of sociocultural capital—those typically underrepresented in higher education—an entry point into college where they are more likely to persist to graduation and/or to transfer. Despite this important role, research has found that there are inequalities in vertical transfer rates such that students from lower income backgrounds and Black/African-American students are less likely to successfully transfer to 4-year colleges than their higher income or White peers (Dougherty & Kienzl, 2006; Taylor & Jain, 2017), suggesting that 2-year colleges may not actually be supporting transfer in the ways intended.

Theoretical Frameworks for Student Success

Several theoretical frameworks delineate the relationship between student characteristics, experiences, and outcomes in the college context. Perna and Thomas’s (2008) Conceptual Model of Student Success, for example, presents four contexts, nested within one another, that have reciprocal relationships with students' success. The outermost layer represents social, economic, and policy contexts, followed by the school context, which is influenced by the broader social, economic, and policy contexts. More proximal contexts are the family and internal contexts; the internal, which is nested within the family context, includes students' attitudes and behaviors as products of the more distal three contexts, and as determinants of students' success. Astin’s (1993) inputs-environment-outcome (I-E-O) similarly posits that college outcomes are the product of multiple levels of influence on the student, specifically individual-level “inputs” and features of the college environment.

When applied to economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students, both models frame student success posttransfer as resulting from interactions between individual (e.g., vertical transfer status) and family-level factors (e.g., economic disadvantage) which act as inputs, and school-level environmental factors (e.g., institutional supports for transfer students, articulation agreements), all of which are influenced by broader social, economic, and policy contexts. Since students exist and learn within the context of the university environment, we can infer that school-level factors interact with student- and family-level factors to influence student outcomes such as degree attainment after transfer to a 4-year college.¹

Risk Factors for Economically Disadvantaged Vertical Transfer Students' Academic Performance & Retention

Academic Underpreparedness

Many students enter 2-year colleges academically underprepared for the rigor of postsecondary education. Economically disadvantaged students, in particular, often report that they perceive their English and math skills to be barriers to their academic success (Soria et al., 2013). Roughly 41% of 2-year college students and 29% of vertical transfer students at 4-year public institutions enroll in at least one remedial (i.e., noncredit bearing) course in their first 2 years of college (Bailey et al., 2005; Skomsvold, 2014) and as many as 39.1% of all undergraduates enroll in a remedial course at some point after high school (Campbell & Wescott, 2019). One of the primary reasons students leave college is academic underpreparedness (Daley, 2010; Stinebrickner & Stinebrickner, 2014) with some estimates indicating up to one-third of students who leave college do so because of academic difficulties (Tinto, 2001), highlighting the importance of remedial or developmental education in supporting students' success. However, it appears that academic difficulties are often not adequately addressed by remedial education courses. One study of students who entered the postsecondary system through 2-year colleges found that only about half of students complete all of their remedial courses (Chen, 2016), thus remedial courses may not fully resolve issues associated with academic underpreparation. Academic skills, however, are crucial for posttransfer success—among vertical transfer students, research finds that higher GPA prior to transfer predicts both higher GPA posttransfer (D’Amico et al., 2014) and a higher likelihood of retention after the first year at a 4-year college (Luo et al., 2007).

It is also worth noting that remedial education itself may be a barrier to success for economically disadvantaged students due to the costs of enrolling in remedial courses. The direct financial costs of remedial education are high; it has been reported that, on average, students spend between $1,607 and $2,008 at public 2-year colleges and between $2,025 and $2,531 at public 4-year colleges on remedial courses alone during a single academic year (Strong American Schools, 2008). Furthermore, remedial courses cost students time—in some cases, up to five semesters. As remedial courses do not typically count towards students' degree requirements, students spend time and money enrolled in remedial courses that do not contribute to their progress towards degree completion (Bailey & Cho, 2010), thus increasing time to graduation (Kolajo, 2010).

There is ongoing debate about the efficacy of remedial education. Some argue there is little empirical evidence in support of the effectiveness of remedial education given “a lack of rigorous follow-up studies” of students who complete remedial courses (Levin & Calcagno, 2007, p. 4). Others have found that students enrolled in remedial courses at the 2-year level are less likely to earn a degree (either an associate degree or a bachelor's degree after for those who transfer), but this effect is accounted for by family and academic background variables (Attewell et al., 2006), suggesting that remedial enrollment, on its own, may not affect college outcomes. Given the direct and indirect costs of remedial enrollment, however, academic underpreparedness that results in remedial enrollment may contribute to academic decline and dropout among economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students.

Credit Loss at Transfer

During the process of transferring from 2- to 4-year institutions, students often find that some of the credits they earned at the 2-year institution are not accepted by the 4-year institution. This results in credit loss and time loss due to the repeating of comparable classes at the 4-year college. National data indicate that only 32.4% of vertical transfer students successfully transfer all of their credits when moving from the 2- to 4-year level. Roughly one-third (28.2%) are able to transfer some, but not all, of their credits. The majority (39.4%), however, are unable to transfer any of their credits (Simone, 2014), indicating there is significant variability in transfer policies and procedures that contribute to credit loss. Furthermore, students themselves identify difficulties with transferring credits as one of the most problematic aspects of the transfer process. In their study of engineering transfer students, Ogilvie and Knight (2019) found that the credit transfer process was seen as the second most challenging aspect of transfer, second only to the cost of attending college.

Several factors have been identified as correlates of credit loss. Using a sample of transfer students in North Carolina's public higher education system, Giani (2019) reported that student race/ethnicity is related to credit loss such that Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and students who were not U.S. citizens were most likely to lose credits and/or lost more credits than White students, adding a racial (in)equity perspective into the examination of economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students. Interestingly, one analysis suggests that students receiving Pell Grants, which indicate high family-level economic disadvantage, lose fewer credits than non-Pell recipients; Pell recipients lost 2.7% of their credits as a result of transfer, compared to 4.6% for non-Pell recipient peers (Giani, 2019). Although it is unclear why student-level sociodemographic characteristics are associated with credit loss in this way, it has been suggested that students of color, who are underrepresented in higher education, may benefit from additional support when selecting courses at the 2-year level to ensure that course credits will transfer (Giani, 2019). Pell Grants are limited to a maximum of 12 semesters, therefore students receiving these grants may be more cautious when selecting classes to ensure that their credits will be preserved so that they can graduate in the time allotted by the Pell Grant.

The number of credits lost affects long-term outcomes at the 4-year level; vertical transfer students who are able to transfer some or all of their credits (an estimated 58%–61% of students) are two and a half times more likely to graduate than peers who transfer fewer than half of their credits (Monaghan & Attewell, 2015; Simone, 2014). Those who transfer 32 or more credits (about 28% of transfer students; Simone, 2014) have been found to be as likely to persist year-to-year as peers who enter directly into 4-year colleges (Gao et al., 2002), indicating a direct relationship between credit transfer and retention. On average, vertical transfer students appear to lose 13 credits the first time they transfer (Simone, 2014), or a little more than one semester worth of classes. Furthermore, one study comparing native 4-year students to vertical transfer students found that while there was no difference in their probability of bachelor's degree attainment, vertical transfer students took an average of three semesters longer to earn their degrees, which the authors contributed to credit loss (Xu et al., 2018).

Protective Factors for Economically Disadvantaged Vertical Transfer Students' Academic Performance & Retention

Associate Degree Attainment

One of the best predictors of successfully transferring to and graduating from a 4-year college for vertical transfer students is the completion of an associate degree. Research has consistently shown that students who complete associate degree requirements prior to transfer are more likely to persist to baccalaureate degree completion than peers who transfer before earning their associate degree (Crook et al., 2012; Kopko & Crosta, 2016; Shapiro et al., 2013). One explanation for this finding is that students with associate degrees are more successful in transferring their credits to 4-year institutions which contributes to retention (Jenkins & Fink, 2015). It is important to note, however, that not all associate degrees are linked to these positive outcomes—Kopko and Crosta (2016) report that transfer-oriented associate degrees (i.e., associate of arts or associate of science) increase the probability of bachelor's degree attainment posttransfer, whereas vocationally oriented degrees (e.g., associate in applied science) do not. They provide several explanations for this finding. First, they found that students with transfer-oriented degrees were, unsurprisingly, more successful in transferring to 4-year colleges. Specifically, they were able to transfer to institutions with better retention and graduation rates than the institutions where students without transfer-oriented degrees enrolled. Another potential contributor is that students with transfer-oriented degrees often benefit from articulation agreements that allow them to preserve credits through the transfer process, which increases the likelihood of degree completion (Kopko & Crosta, 2016). Despite the strong evidence in support of degree completion prior to transfer, it appears that very few vertical transfer students actually earn their associate degree prior to transfer; one national analysis of vertical transfer students between 2008 and 2014 found that only about 4% earned a credential (either an associate degree or a certificate) before leaving or transferring (Shaprio et al., 2015).

Timing of Transfer/Credit Accumulation Before Transfer

Considering the benefits of associate degree attainment for persistence at the 4-year level, it can be inferred that students who transfer further into their education at the 2-year level may be more likely to persist at their 4-year institution. Research examining the effects of the timing of transfer is sparse, however, some work has reported that students are more likely to successfully transfer to a 4-year college after completing 40 credits at the 2-year level, approximately the equivalent of three semesters at the 2-year college (Monaghan & Attewell, 2015). Other work suggests that students who earn at least 10 credits before transfer earn bachelor's degrees at a higher rate (71%) than native 4-year students (66%) and vertical transfer students who transfer prior to earning 10 credits (38%; Adelman, 1999). The number of credits earned posttransfer is also positively associated with an increased likelihood of retention between the fall of sophomore and junior year (Blekic et al., 2020), supporting that credit accrual is an indicator of academic momentum associated with college success (Clovis & Chang, 2019).

Since completing an associate degree prior to transfer contributes to students' success in college (Crook et al., 2012; Kopko & Crosta, 2016; Shapiro et al., 2013), it may be that students who complete more semesters at the 2-year level prior to transfer are better poised to succeed after transfer to 4-year institutions. One explanation for this may be that students who spend more time enrolled in a 2-year college develop stronger nonacademic skills and knowledge that contribute to college success (e.g., time management and study skills, an understanding of the landscape of higher education; Conley, 2008), and therefore perform better academically than peers who spend less time at the 2-year level.

It is worth considering, however, that students who spend longer periods of time at a 2-year institution before transferring accumulate more college-related debt/costs than those who transfer earlier. Both the financial and psychological burden of student loan debt are known to contribute to an increased likelihood of dropout (Robb et al., 2012), therefore students with more debt are less likely to be retained year-to-year. Financial concerns around continuing college may be particularly salient for economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students. Students who spend more time enrolled in a 2-year college likely spend more money on college than peers who transfer earlier, and therefore have more college-related debt before transferring, which, in turn, may increase the likelihood that they are not retained between the first and second years posttransfer.

Academic and Social Integration

Students' sense of belonging and integration into the college community has been identified as an important contributor to student academic achievement and retention (Strayhorn, 2012; Wolf et al., 2017). Social integration, for example, is positively associated with students' GPA and their likelihood of graduating with a bachelor's degree within 6 years of entering college (Bronkema & Bowman, 2019). Among vertical transfer students, aspects of academic and social integration have similarly been linked to indicators of posttransfer success. For example, D’Amico et al. (2014) found that academic integration and participation in extracurricular activities such as sports or student-run organizations predicted academic performance in the first semester posttransfer. Academic integration was also associated with higher odds of persistence after the first year posttransfer (D’Amico et al., 2014). Dowd et al. (2013) examined the role of institutional agents in promoting the transfer of lower income and students of color from a community college to selective 4-year colleges. Based on narrative life story interviews, the authors found individuals who have status, authority, and access to resources within institutions, particularly 4-year college faculty members, were instrumental in providing a sense of psychological security and validation through their relationship with low-status students, which in turn supported the formation of students' “elite” academic identity. Indeed, best practice recommendations for vertical transfer students' success include the promotion of social integration strategies that can increase students' sense of belonging on campus (Glynn, 2019).

Intervention Programs for Vertical Transfer Students

Beyond institutional policies that facilitate student transfer from an administrative perspective, several programs have been designed to support vertical transfer students as they acclimate to their 4-year colleges. One type of program is a “learning community” which aims to support student success by integrating social interaction and academic learning. Learning communities foster academic success by creating a socially supportive college environment, and thus have been shown to be one effective method for supporting vertical transfer students' success. For example, in a sample of first-year vertical transfer students, the “Transfer2Terp” program developed at the University of Maryland was found to foster psychological well-being, increase students' civic engagement, and contribute to students' perceptions of personal growth (Fink et al., 2016). Other studies of discipline-specific learning communities provide further evidence that this form of intervention positively supports transfer students' development. Lord et al. (2012) found that participants in a criminal justice-oriented learning community showed increased campus involvement and commitment to the institution, use of academic resources on campus, and lower levels of transfer-related stress than peers not participating in the learning community. And, at Texas A&M University, a STEM-oriented learning community designed to support vertical transfer students, which included scholarship funds and required attendance at monthly meetings focused on academic skill-building, contributed to increases in retention and GPA. At the time of reporting, 89% of participants in this learning community had either graduated or were on-track to graduate (Scott et al., 2017).

Another similar approach to supporting vertical transfer students' success posttransfer is the development of transfer centers on both 2- and 4-year college campuses. Broadly, transfer centers aim to provide students with support navigating the transfer process and the 4-year college environment by providing academic counseling, information about majors and related careers, and support as students integrate into the campus community. Accordingly, transfer centers have been identified as important contributors to vertical transfer students' success at 4-year colleges, particularly for underrepresented students such as those from low-income backgrounds (Chase et al., 2014; Zamani, 2001). Research supports the importance of on-campus resources such as transfer centers; one study of over 147,000 2-year college students found that students attending schools with on-campus transfer centers were more likely to transfer to Bachelor's degree granting programs within 9 years of enrollment (Hayward, 2011).

Streamlining the vertical transfer process within and across broad-access colleges requires collaboration across multiple stakeholders for the formation of key elements such as consistent advising services and data tools for advisors and students. An example of one such initiative is the Transfer Opportunity Project at the City University of New York (CUNY), a critical aspect of which are articulation agreements between 2 or more colleges that outline transfer processes and policies between these institutions. CUNY provides students who earn an associate degree prior to transfer with 60 credits towards a bachelor's degree as well as allowing them to pass the general education requirements without taking additional courses at the 4-year level, as long as they are transferring within the CUNY system (Kopko & Crosta, 2016).

Conclusions and Future Directions

Enrollment in 2-year colleges is predicted to increase through 2029 (NCES, 2019c), indicating that a growing number of students may intend to transfer to 4-year colleges in the coming years. Despite the prevalence of vertical transfer, little work has examined outcomes specifically for economically disadvantaged students—who comprise half of the students currently enrolled in 2-year colleges (Fry & Cilluffo, 2019)—as they transfer to 4-year colleges. This scoping review addresses this gap in the literature by synthesizing research on economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students and identifying student-level risk and protective factors for students' success immediately after transferring to a 4-year institution. This research has several important implications that may influence policies related to student transfer. First, more effort should be made at the 2-year level to support students through degree completion prior to transfer, as this has been shown to be associated with better outcomes at the 4-year level (Crook et al., 2012; Shapiro et al., 2013). Second, additional research into institutional factors that facilitate successful transfer at the 4-year level is needed (Bahr et al., 2013). From an institutional perspective, reform efforts to facilitate transfer, such as California's creation of transfer pathways between state community colleges and the California State University system, have been shown to be effective in increasing baccalaureate completion rates among vertical transfer students (Baker et al., 2021), warranting further investigation. Implementing programs that explicitly aim to support student vertical transfer, such as learning communities, transfer centers, or preestablished transfer pathways, may be effective ways to support economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students through baccalaureate degree completion. Third, recent work has found that vertical transfer students report experiencing a greater number of “competing personal demands,” or environmental factors (e.g., off-campus employment, family responsibilities) that can “pull” students' attention away from academic endeavors, than their peers (Ogilvie & Knight, 2019, p. 11). Thus, institutional supports that can help mitigate some of these competing demands, such as individualized academic advising or on-campus childcare, may be effective in increasing retention among economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students. Finally, because recent research shows that the college experiences of transfer students vary by student sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., Hispanic/Latino background, first-generation to college) and institutional characteristics (e.g., selectivity), future research should focus on specific subgroups within the economically disadvantaged vertical transfer student population while also accounting for institutional factors (Ogilvie & Knight, 2019).

Supporting the success of economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students has become increasingly important in light of the impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on higher education. Associate degree attainment has dropped to its lowest rate since 2012 despite increases in bachelor's degree attainment during the same period (Huie et al., 2021). Vertical transfer rates have similarly declined, particularly among students of color (Causey et al., 2020). Course completion at the 2-year level has also decreased, in some places by as much as 7%, as colleges shifted to online instruction in the Spring of 2020 (Bird et al., 2020). The far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on both students and institutions of higher education may have long-lasting negative impacts on vertical transfer rates, particularly among economically disadvantaged students who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic (St. Amour, 2020).

This scoping review focuses only on individual-level risks, but individual and institutional factors likely interact to affect academic performance and retention, thus future research should more closely examine the interactions between individual and institutional factors in determining outcomes for economically disadvantaged vertical transfer students. Furthermore, we focus only on outcomes during and immediately after the first-year posttransfer, but risk and protective factors and intervention effects may have different relationships with later outcomes which warrant further investigation. And, in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions of higher education should focus directly on supporting economically disadvantaged students on the path to and through transfer to 4-year colleges.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Neshat Yazdani

Notes

Author Biographies

Neshat Yazdani is a PhD candidate in applied developmental psychology at the Fordham University. Her work focuses on well-being during the transition from adolescence to adulthood, particularly in educational contexts. She is interested in how this research can improve educational experiences and outcomes for students underrepresented in higher education.

Leigh S. McCallen is the director of research and evaluation at the College Access: Research and Action (CARA), an organization based at the CUNY Graduate Center focused on equitable higher education entry and success in New York City. Her research uses quantitative, qualitative, and participatory approaches to understand how historically underserved student populations access institutional capital in ways that promote social mobility in the context of public secondary and postsecondary educational settings.

Lindsay T. Hoyt is an assistant professor of applied developmental psychology and directs the Youth Development, Diversity, and Disparities (3D) Lab at the Fordham University. She studies how biological, behavioral, and social processes interact to influence developmental trajectories across two key transitions: from childhood to adolescence (puberty) and from adolescence to adulthood (emerging adulthood). Her research focuses on environmentally sensitive psychobiological systems (e.g., stress, sleep) that underlie socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequalities in health and well-being.

Joshua L. Brown is an associate professor and director of the applied developmental psychology doctoral training program at the Fordham University. His research is at the intersection of the developmental, education, and prevention sciences, and focuses on urban public schools and classrooms as important contexts for the development of diverse populations of adults and children. He has over 15 years’ experience leading federally and privately funded research developing, implementing, and rigorously evaluating culturally sensitive interventions in educational settings to promote well-being and reduce stress among teachers and promote the social-emotional and academic development of children from racially/ethnically and economically marginalized backgrounds.

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Predictors of Economically Disadvantaged Vertical Transfer Students' Academic Performance and Retention: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Keywords

Methodology

Defining Posttransfer Success

The Role of Community Colleges in the Postsecondary Landscape

Theoretical Frameworks for Student Success

Risk Factors for Economically Disadvantaged Vertical Transfer Students' Academic Performance & Retention

Academic Underpreparedness

Credit Loss at Transfer

Protective Factors for Economically Disadvantaged Vertical Transfer Students' Academic Performance & Retention

Associate Degree Attainment

Timing of Transfer/Credit Accumulation Before Transfer

Academic and Social Integration

Intervention Programs for Vertical Transfer Students

Conclusions and Future Directions

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biographies

References