Takes Two to Tango: Essential Practices of Highly Effective Transfer Partnerships

Using student records from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide, the authors identify partnerships of two- and four-year institutions that were more effective than expected (controlling for student and institutional characteristics) in enabling community college entrants to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree. Based on this methodology, and in partnership with the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, the authors visited six pairs of two- and four-year college transfer partnerships identified as high performers, interviewing more than 350 faculty, student-facing and senior-level staff, and transfer students. From these in-depth interviews, the authors identified a set of essential transfer practices common among these highly effective institutional partnerships. The practices were grouped under three broad strategies:

1. make transfer a priority,
2. create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction, and
3. provide tailored transfer advising.

This article appears in the Community College Review, vol. 45, no. 4.