What Does Reverse Transfer Look Like When There is no Funding or Mandate to Support It?

Rockey, Marci; Fox, Heather L.; Zamani‐Gallaher, Eboni M.

doi:10.1080/10668926.2019.1706666

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Despite the relatively rapid diffusion of reverse transfer policies across states, few studies have examined their relationship with student outcomes. The majority of existing scholarship on reverse transfer policies has been qualitative in nature, leveraging case study designs, focus groups, or policy inventories to understand how programs operate, how students perceive their state's program or the value of an associate degree awarded through reverse transfer, and challenges experienced by students or states under reverse transfer policies (e.g., Friedel & Wilson, 2015; Geyer, 2016; Merten, 2017; Robinson, 2015; Rockey et al., 2021; Wilson, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Reverse Transfer Associate Degrees on Education and Labor Market Outcomes

Odle¹,

Russell

2023

J Policy Anal Manage

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Reverse transfer associate degrees are credentials retroactively awarded to current bachelor's degree seekers, combining four‐year credits with credits previously earned at a community college. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we use a difference‐in‐difference design to compare students before and after receipt of a reverse transfer degree to similar students over time. We find reverse transfer degrees have little impact on students’ academic outcomes (GPA, credits, and bachelor's degree attainment) and labor market outcomes (employment and earnings). Our findings contrast with existing descriptive work reporting large benefits of such degrees, due to our methodological improvements and more robust data. The null effect on earnings suggests that returns to an associate degree are driven by human capital gains rather than signaling in the reverse transfer student population.

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