Community college students start college with goals including transferring to earn a bachelor's degree and gaining the skills and credentials that have immediate labor market value. These goals are not mutually exclusive. Students deserve access to clear pathways, whether they enroll in short-term education and training programs or in college…

This paper reports on narrative inquiry research conducted with nontraditional undergraduates as they pursued a common goal of becoming engineers. Participants were enrolled in a two-year engineering transfer program offered in the evenings, via synchronous broadcast distance instruction, by a public, land-grant university situated in the western…

Background/Context: Transfer from community colleges to selective four-year institutions is an issue that assumes great importance for the democratization of postsecondary education. Yet research on what influences transfer to selective four-year institutions is surprisingly sparse. Transfer research typically lumps four-year schools receiving…

James Madison University (JMU) and Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) teamed up in April 2014 to build a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between their respective four-year and two-year honors programs. This MOU is the basis for the continued work between these two institutions to collaborate and find research to assist other interested…

Beginning at a local two-year college and then transferring to a four-year institution has been one of the most affordable ways for students to earn a bachelor's degree. Yet transfer pathways from two- to four-year institutions are often complex and confusing, and too many students who begin at a community college and aspire to earn a bachelor's…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore not only the academic measures such as grade point average of success of college-to-university transfer programs (Pathway Programs), but also the social-cultural facilitators and barriers throughout the students' Pathway experience. Design/methodology/approach: The experience of students and…

The introduction of SB-1440 in 2010, also known as the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act, appeared to be an opportunity for California educators and policy makers to address the achievement gap among community college students with the introduction of the streamlined associate degree for transfer (ADT) (Padilla, 2010). If implemented…

Most of the students who set out to earn degrees in community colleges never do. Interventions that simplify the complex organizational structures of these schools are promising solutions to this problem. This article is the first to provide rigorous evidence of the effects of structured transfer programs, one such intervention. Leveraging the…

Washington's community and technical colleges, private non-profit baccalaureate, and public baccalaureate colleges and universities have a proud history of partnering to serve students. Nowhere is this cooperation more evident than in the smooth transfer process from community and technical colleges into four-year colleges and universities. This…

Currently, there remains a shortage of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields despite recent efforts to increase numbers. The Department of Commerce is predicting that STEM job openings will grow 17% by 2018, which is a much faster rate than most other careers. These are among the highest-paying fields, in part…

Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs) in California have the potential to play a key role in raising Latino college completion rates. However, while HSIs provide access to higher education for Latinos, student success, persistence, and completion rates remain low. This study utilized the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the…

This qualitative investigation of higher education institutional development addresses new universities that were former community colleges in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Stemming from an original study conducted nearly two decades earlier, this investigation's data were collected from the same institutions and from similar…

The Office for Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) founded in 1989 focuses on P-20 education and the role of community colleges in facilitating educational access and equity. This article highlights the work of OCCRL as a research center that bridges inquiry, policy, and practice in contributing to the national dialogue on relevant…

Student transfer processes from the California Community Colleges (CCC) to the California State University (CSU) have been simplified somewhat over the past few years, but they remain complex and confusing for most transfer students, according to students, administrators, and staff at several community colleges and CSU campuses. Transfer…

This paper considers the impact of transfer credits on the GPA of college-university transfer students. The data come from the academic records of students enrolled at 2 different campuses at an undergraduate university in Ontario across a 4-year period. The results from multivariate regression analyses show that the number of transfer credits is…