State Policy and Community College--Baccalaureate Transfer. National Center Report

This paper examines the role of state policy in influencing community college-baccalaureate transfer. It discusses the importance of two-year to four-year (2/4) transfer performance as a state policy issue, reviews national research about transfer patterns, and presents findings about state policy and transfer performance in six states. It concludes by offering recommendations to state policymakers for improving 2/4 transfer performance. Because the baccalaureate degree is becoming the entry point into the workforce for the majority of students, it is becoming increasingly important that the 2/4 transfer work well. The struggle to identify a uniform measure of activity complicates transfer research. This paper describes the Transfer Assembly Project, based at the Center for the Study of Community Colleges at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center of Educational Statistics' study of alternative transfer rates. The Education Commission of the States (ECS) surveyed all 50 states in order to identify the different ways the states define policies for 2/4 transfer. The ECS report lists seven categories of policies, ranging from state law to statewide common core curricula and common course numbering. This study found that none of the six states studied uses all of the tools of state policy to energize transfer. Includes 33 state resources from the 6 states examined. (Contains 25 references.) (NB)