"You'll Use This Everyday for the Rest of Your Life..."

[ciao_yall]

What is the transfer rate from CCs to 4 year colleges?  How many people begin at a CC and eventually graduate?  I can look that up when I am done teaching in a couple hours, but I figured someone around'yer parts has that at their fingertips.

It depends...

At our CC, for students who state at the outset they intend to transfer and successfully complete transfer-level math, it's around 60%. We find it's pretty consistent across demographic and income groups.

The block is actually accessing transfer-level math - it's low-income, students of color who rarely take transfer level math in the first place.

Why don't 40% transfer? Good question. Some decide the AA or Certificate is enough for them to go into nursing or computer networking or whatever. Others decide school isn't for them and decide to travel the world for a while.

[Aster]

What is the transfer rate from CCs to 4 year colleges?  How many people begin at a CC and eventually graduate?  I can look that up when I am done teaching in a couple hours, but I figured someone around'yer parts has that at their fingertips.

One would think that such numbers would be easy to get, but they are not. Community colleges generally do not track what happens to students after they leave. And 4-year universities may not either. If they do, they may report transfers in very different ways. For example, AA transfers may be lumped differently from non-AA transfers that for some reason still got 60 credits from their community college. This is complicated in that some states award "automatic AA's" for students with 60+ credits while other states do not.

Or if there is a 2+2 agreement between certain institutions, that can result in over-reporting bias.

Or for another example, a 4-year university might count/not count students who just transferred a few courses over from a community college.

Or students with AP credit and/or HS dual enrollment may/may not be included.

Myself, between what I've looked up myself or received from previous CHE reporting, the metrics for transfer success range anywhere from 16% to 80% depending on who wrote the report.

[Wahoo Redux]

What is the transfer rate from CCs to 4 year colleges?  How many people begin at a CC and eventually graduate?  I can look that up when I am done teaching in a couple hours, but I figured someone around'yer parts has that at their fingertips.

One would think that such numbers would be easy to get, but they are not. Community colleges generally do not track what happens to students after they leave. And 4-year universities may not either. If they do, they may report transfers in very different ways. For example, AA transfers may be lumped differently from non-AA transfers that for some reason still got 60 credits from their community college. This is complicated in that some states award "automatic AA's" for students with 60+ credits while other states do not.

Or if there is a 2+2 agreement between certain institutions, that can result in over-reporting bias.

Or for another example, a 4-year university might count/not count students who just transferred a few courses over from a community college.

Or students with AP credit and/or HS dual enrollment may/may not be included.

Myself, between what I've looked up myself or received from previous CHE reporting, the metrics for transfer success range anywhere from 16% to 80% depending on who wrote the report.

Somewhere I remember reading that the low CC completion rate is incorrectly calculated because it does not factor in the successful transfer rate.  That is, the 4-year graduation rate of students who transfer from a CC is actually quite high and therefore should be considered as a graduation rate for the CC, not as a "drop-out" rate.   I'll see if I can find that later tonight.

[ciao_yall]

What is the transfer rate from CCs to 4 year colleges?  How many people begin at a CC and eventually graduate?  I can look that up when I am done teaching in a couple hours, but I figured someone around'yer parts has that at their fingertips.

One would think that such numbers would be easy to get, but they are not. Community colleges generally do not track what happens to students after they leave. And 4-year universities may not either. If they do, they may report transfers in very different ways. For example, AA transfers may be lumped differently from non-AA transfers that for some reason still got 60 credits from their community college. This is complicated in that some states award "automatic AA's" for students with 60+ credits while other states do not.

Or if there is a 2+2 agreement between certain institutions, that can result in over-reporting bias.

Or for another example, a 4-year university might count/not count students who just transferred a few courses over from a community college.

Or students with AP credit and/or HS dual enrollment may/may not be included.

Myself, between what I've looked up myself or received from previous CHE reporting, the metrics for transfer success range anywhere from 16% to 80% depending on who wrote the report.

Somewhere I remember reading that the low CC completion rate is incorrectly calculated because it does not factor in the successful transfer rate.  That is, the 4-year graduation rate of students who transfer from a CC is actually quite high and therefore should be considered as a graduation rate for the CC, not as a "drop-out" rate.   I'll see if I can find that later tonight.

It also doesn't factor in the many students who have no interest in a certificate, degree or transfer but are just taking a class to update/refresh their skills.

[spork]

The percentage of high school students in my state is even  lower than the national average. Less than a quarter of the high school graduates are expected to be "college ready". And yes, like Polly posted above, at least half of the "not ready" attend non-selective community colleges first.

The non-completion percentages for community college students are often much higher than at most 4-year institutions.  A great many of those students do not complete an AA degree. A great many of those students never transfer to a 4-year university. But much of the U.S. community college mission is less about academic success and more about simply providing academic access for the *possibility* of success.

This inconvenient truth is often forgotten or ignored by political leaders and the general public.

High failure rates at my community college are regularly tracked. I'm at an open enrollment institution, and I've bench-marked most of my assessments to match up with R2-level academic standards from my discipline (from a previous university that I worked at). This allows me to do somewhat accurate comparative analysis between completion rates without wondering if my assessment quality is different.

For one example course.
Pass rates at R2 - at least 70%
Pass rates at community college - under 60% (and less than 50% passing is not unusual)

This is one reason why the push for "free community college" (or at least "tuition-free community college") in some states is not going to suddenly jack up the rate of bachelor's degree attainment in those states. The "everyone should go to college" mantra needs to be replaced by "many are not going to succeed in college given current conditions in many K-12 systems."

[ciao_yall]

The percentage of high school students in my state is even  lower than the national average. Less than a quarter of the high school graduates are expected to be "college ready". And yes, like Polly posted above, at least half of the "not ready" attend non-selective community colleges first.

The non-completion percentages for community college students are often much higher than at most 4-year institutions.  A great many of those students do not complete an AA degree. A great many of those students never transfer to a 4-year university. But much of the U.S. community college mission is less about academic success and more about simply providing academic access for the *possibility* of success.

This inconvenient truth is often forgotten or ignored by political leaders and the general public.

High failure rates at my community college are regularly tracked. I'm at an open enrollment institution, and I've bench-marked most of my assessments to match up with R2-level academic standards from my discipline (from a previous university that I worked at). This allows me to do somewhat accurate comparative analysis between completion rates without wondering if my assessment quality is different.

For one example course.
Pass rates at R2 - at least 70%
Pass rates at community college - under 60% (and less than 50% passing is not unusual)

This is one reason why the push for "free community college" (or at least "tuition-free community college") in some states is not going to suddenly jack up the rate of bachelor's degree attainment in those states. The "everyone should go to college" mantra needs to be replaced by "many are not going to succeed in college given current conditions in many K-12 systems."

Disagree.

Free increases the access to community college to people who may not have considered it in the first place. And we expect that bringing these students in and exposing them to the possibilities a college education can provide will motivate them to change their goals to something that involves a degree and a career. 

[Aster]

Reverse disagree. Community college costs are absurdly low. A few hundred bucks for a 3-credit course is typical. Heck, we have more than a few folks who are homeless, but enrolled in classes with us. That's how cheap it is.

But community colleges pay a socio-economic price for being so cheap. The model is obligated to maintain a workforce primarily made up of part-time professors paid a pittance. Community colleges are not unlike the Family Dollar for keeping themselves operating. Only instead of relying on cheap chinese goods made in sweatshops, community colleges rely on cheap adjuncts paid $1800 a course.

If an institution is going to be brutally honest about significantly boosting their completion rates, there is really only one way that colleges reliably make that happen. They increase their incoming student selectivity. This is how nearly all elite SLAC's get their high reputational ratings. All R1's do this too. And many, many R2's. Our own president has publicly stated support for becoming selective. When a community college president acknowledges that it he is exploring selectivity of admitted students, you know something's seriously $@*& up.

[Caracal]

But community colleges pay a socio-economic price for being so cheap. The model is obligated to maintain a workforce primarily made up of part-time professors paid a pittance. Community colleges are not unlike the Family Dollar for keeping themselves operating. Only instead of relying on cheap chinese goods made in sweatshops, community colleges rely on cheap adjuncts paid $1800 a course.

The model isn't obligated to do anything. Models don't have agency State governments and other groups have chosen to consistently underfund community colleges, forcing them to rely heavily on tuition for their budget and then community colleges have responded to this by hiring lots of adjuncts and paying them a pittance, even by adjunct standards. It doesn't actually have to be this way...