Student Flow Between Community Colleges: Investigating Lateral Transfer

Abstract

The traditional unidirectional (''linear'') postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them through multiple postsecondary institutions, both within levels of the higher education system (e.g., multiple community colleges, multiple 4-year institutions) and across levels (e.g., movement back and forth between community colleges and 4-year institutions). These ''swirling'' patterns of enrollment are widely recognized by scholars of higher education, but they remain poorly understood. In this study, I employ data that address 89,057 first-time students in the California community college system to answer a number of key questions concerning lateral transfer between community colleges, which, according to prior research, constitutes one sizeable component of student ''swirl''. Building on the very limited work on this topic, I examine whether the reported high prevalence of lateral transfer holds true under a more stringent operational framework than that employed in prior work. I explore whether lateral transfer is primarily an artifact of students enrolling simultaneously in multiple community colleges, sometimes called ''double-dipping''. I investigate the timing of lateral transfer from several different perspectives to determine how lateral transfer fits in students' progress and development. Finally, I probe the relationship between students' level of academic investment in their current community college and the risk of lateral transfer.

Student Swirl at a Single Institution: The Role of Timing and Student Characteristics

“…This common transfer behavior is referred to as upward or vertical transfer and its determinants have been extensively studied. For a detailed discussion of this and other types of transfer from community colleges, see Bahr (2011). Transfer from a 4-year institution is less common but not unusual.…”

“…According to McCormick (1997), about one out of four students (28%) who began at a 4-year institution transferred: 16% to another 4-year institution, and 13% to a less-than-4-year institution. Moving between 4-year institutions is referred to as horizontal, while moving from 4-to a 2-year institution is referred to as a reverse transfer (Bahr 2011). It is logical to assume that these two types of transfers have different effects on the probability of return to the study institution.…”

The Relationship Between State Policy Levers and Student Mobility

“…He finds that some (about 13 %) of cases of lateral transfer are actually concurrent enrollment. Moreover, students are more likely to transfer laterally early in their enrollment (Bahr 2012). Lateral transfer at community colleges also appears to be related to race/ethnicity and grant aid (Bahr 2009a), with African American or Black students more likely to laterally transfer than white students.…”

“…It is inclusive of persistence (Goldrick-Rab and Pfeffer 2009), lateral transfer (Andrews et al 2014); reverse transfer (Bahr 2009a); concurrent enrollment (McCormick 2003); multi-institution attendance (Adelman 1999); the international movement of students (Bhandari and Blumenthal 2013); credit transfer (Di Paolo and Pegg 2013), and more. Much of the work on mobility in higher education has focused on movement between institutions (Bahr 2012). …”

“…For example, lateral transfer may be purposeful and possibly productive, depending on context. In Bahr's (2012) work on community college students, he finds that lateral transfer may be a deliberate choice made by students early on as in exploration phase of their studies, although he is careful to distinguish between purposeful and productive. Kim et al (2012) by contrast suggest that lateral transfer among 4-year college students may be productive in the case of students in their study who transferred back home from an out-of-to in-state institution.…”