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“Notoriously leaky”; “complex and frustrating”; “unavailable, confusing … inconsistent information.” As this Beyond Transfer series has consistently demonstrated, the transfer system in higher education is in great need of repair: 80 percent of associate degree students aim to complete a B.A., but only about a third do so.
At College Access: Research and Action (CARA), we had heard directly about the challenges in the transfer pipeline from our peer advisers, students we train to provide navigational and relational support to incoming freshmen at their campuses. Those who were transfer students themselves and had to overcome a host of barriers in their own processes urged us to expand our peer-to-peer model to increase advising capacity specifically for transfer populations.
So in the spring of 2021, with funding from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, CARA set out to find and plug the leaks that led transfer students to abandon their B.A. aspirations. Our focus was the City University of New York—a system of 25 distinct colleges across five boroughs, ranging from two-year community colleges all the way to graduate programs. Despite being under one university structure, transferring across CUNY campuses is far from seamless. As a result, while eight out of every nine CUNY community college students intend to transfer to complete their B.A., only one in nine does so within six years; of those who do, fewer than half complete their B.A. within three years.
CARA’s goal was ambitious: develop a systemwide model that positioned trained peer advisers to help create a seamless pipeline for students. We began by defining the existing leaks on a subset of campuses and figuring out how to train and position the peer leaders to patch them (see IHE blog post “Making Transfer Students Visible”).
Utilizing feedback from CUNY students and partners, we developed a map of what we thought the leak points were; however, over the next three-plus years, we learned that this map was neither sufficient nor accurate.
While it reflected broad phases of the process, it became abundantly clear that there is not just one linear transfer pipeline; rather, each campus has several, and each pipeline has a multitude of different and very specific leaks depending upon the programs, policies and resources at each of the sending and receiving campuses. One campus may lose transfer students during the application phase, another could be hemorrhaging them during credit transfer and still another might have leak points that other campuses lack. As David Fischer described, “Each campus functions with a great deal of autonomy … when one CUNY college implements an effective tool or strategy to support transfer students, there is no guarantee that other CUNY colleges will take it up.”
The one commonality across all campuses was that transfer students needed far more individualized support than was available.
Here we profile three campuses to illustrate what we learned about the pipelines and how we used peer leaders to plug some of the leaks at both two- and four-year colleges.
Snapshots of the Leaky Pipes
Hostos Community College: Increasing Transfer Applications Is Just the Start
Through our work with Hostos Community College, we saw up close the issues transfer students face at two-year institutions, beginning with the application phase. Peer advisers there first worked to increase the 19 percent transfer application rate. “We cannot help people transfer if they don’t fill out an application,” Rocio Rayo, director of transfer services, explained. This involves not only filling out the application, but also tracking it after submission—incomplete, submitted, denied, accepted—and supporting students through several bureaucratic leaks that follow. Peer leaders did incredible work, increasing the application rate to 75 percent.
However, this was only half the battle. Working across several feeder campuses, peer advisers moved onto enrollment support. This proved even more complicated. Rayo explained, “There are some colleges who have great websites that we can send our transfer students to … There are ones where we can see everyone who’s accepted [through a portal] so we send them an email and a text and we call them and we say, this is the information you need to do to follow up to enroll … But not all CUNYs have that.”
Given these variations, Hostos realized that more support needed to come directly from the four-year colleges. As Schudde and Jabbar argue in their recent book Discredited: Power, Privilege and Community College Transfer, “We can’t solve the problem of community college transfer without also holding universities accountable and bringing them in.” Rayo’s strategy was to connect students to individuals on those campuses, “We don’t put a student in touch with advisement at Lehman College or send them to a building. We have to put them in touch with a person.” Regardless of the campus, however, there was simply not the capacity to meet everyone’s needs. “This is not a leak,” Rayo explained. “It’s an underlying hole.”
Queens College: Finding Help Across Diverging Pipelines
Despite having approximately 1,900 incoming transfer students per year, Queens College’s advising center is primarily focused on supporting first-time freshmen to graduate within four years. Transfer students who enter with a declared major can get transfer credit review and course selection support from their academic department but are left to navigate the enrollment steps and integration onto their new campus largely on their own. The 500-plus students who enter undeclared traverse a diverging set of even leakier pipelines: In need of declaring a major as soon as possible, they are tasked with navigating information scattered across an unfamiliar campus without adequate access to a designated adviser; without a set of major requirements, they are at risk of enrolling in classes they don’t need; if they hit 60 credits and remain undeclared, they lose financial aid support. One peer adviser explained, “A lot of undeclared students have a lot of credits and no direction. They are lost, not knowing what resources to reach out to in order to get help … Once they lose aid, that causes them to spiral.”
While all transfer students at Queens College need more support, those who are undeclared need even more. Caitlin Wilson, program supervisor, described peer advisers—each one assigned to a different pathway (e.g., education, business, etc.)—spending hours with each undeclared transfer student, helping them to sift through requirements across a range of majors. “We work with them over the whole semester, taking them through a step-by-step process. Having time and resources is really needed for these students.”
John Jay: A More Seamless Pipeline, for Some
John Jay College has made tremendous strides in creating a more seamless pipeline for the one-third to a half of the transfer students who enter through the college’s well developed Justice Academy. A partnership with seven CUNY community colleges, the academy guarantees students in nine majors automatic admission and transfer of all previous course credit. It also provides dedicated advising and a transfer seminar to help students acclimate to their new campus. This best practice model has eliminated entire stages of the pipeline for these students and the countless leaks that come with them.
Vincent Papandrea, the college’s director of admissions, explained, “As soon as students get their associates degree, they’re automatically admitted. There’s no need for a new application, there’s no need for submitting new documentation. All they have to do is fill out a survey and then it’s all done on the back end. They have people in the Justice Academy on both sides—at the community college and at John Jay—to help students transition, getting them to register, getting them into transfer seminars and then enrolling … We eliminated the application leak. We eliminated the seat deposit leak. We eliminated the transfer evaluation because all the credits come over.”
Unfortunately, this pathway is not available to all John Jay transfer students; for those not in the Justice Academy, the pipeline looks different. These students have access to a departmental academic adviser and a transfer seminar; however, they are at risk of losing credits in the transfer process and have to navigate the leak points that come during application and enrollment with little guidance. Many of the non–Justice Academy students who intend to come never even arrive. Papandrea explained that, with limited capacity in his office, “Until the application is complete, we do not have the staffing to start processing them.” Fortunately, with the added support of peer advisers, the college was able to track application status and support applicants to resolve bureaucratic challenges.
Developing a Systemwide Approach: What It Takes
The unevenness of this transfer landscape makes it very challenging to create a systemic approach. And yet, this is just what is needed. Many systems are making an explicit commitment to comprehensively address the transfer problem, centralizing policies and working across both two- and four-year campuses. This includes CUNY, which has committed to a strategic initiative to “develop and implement a system-wide transfer experience that enables students to move seamlessly and successfully between and within CUNY campuses.”
As CUNY and other universities move forward, they must pay attention to the varied pipelines, specific leaks and the solutions that already exist but need to be systematized, including:
- Eliminating stages of the transfer process at the four-year colleges. John Jay’s Justice Academy, already expanded to Baruch College through its Business Academy, provides a best practice, robust model.
- Creating accessible tools that streamline information. CUNY’s T-Rex system, which enables students and advisers to see how credits will transfer across all CUNY institutions, is an exemplary tool that is “facilitating transfer student success.”
- Expanding individualized transfer support. Peer-to-peer models are a cost-effective approach to providing students hands-on guidance beginning on two-year campuses and bridging through the first semester at four-year campuses.
If we recognize and respond to the countless configurations of leak points, we can create new maps that empower students to successfully transfer and reach their postsecondary goals. In doing so, the system of higher education will broaden access to B.A. completion for the millions of students who enter through community colleges.