Filters in the Education Pipeline: A Study of Transfer Students to the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development

Abstract

Community colleges are disproportionally over-enrolled with both low income students and students of color, while four-year institutions are under-enrolled with the same groups. The vast majority of these students enter the community college with a goal of transferring to the four-year institutions they were unable to access from high school, yet disturbingly large numbers of them fail to successfully transition to baccalaureate completion. A substantial amount of the conversation around this issue focuses on the students themselves and the community colleges that are sending them, but very little of the conversation focuses on the receiving institutions' ability to participate in and influence this transfer process and baccalaureate completion. Nearly half of the nation's undergraduates are enrolled at community colleges. With increasing racial, ethnic and socioeconomic stratification of higher education attainment and institutional access and choice, and corresponding stratification of socioeconomic status along racial and ethnic lines, it is critical that the conversation expand to how four-year institutions of all types receive transfer students. This study used a mixed-methods approach to study the Community College Transfer Opportunity Program (CCTOP) at New York University. CCTOP is a scholarship, advisement and outreach program partnered with 13 area community colleges and the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. The Study compared three groups of students, namely those who enrolled through the CCTOP program, those who had similarly transferred to Steinhardt from community colleges, but outside of the program, and those who had transferred to Steinhardt from other four-year institutions. Quantitatively, 806 transfer students to Steinhardt were analyzed demographically to compare the age, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of each grouping. Admissions data on incoming GPA and transfer credits and academic success data on the initial and cumulative GPA performance and overall persistence was analyzed for each grouping. Qualitatively, eight students representing the three groupings participated in semi-structured interviews about their transfer and transition processes. The study found that the CCTOP program, due to both its financial and programmatic supports, had substantial and significant effects in enrolling otherwise underrepresented demographic populations, and did so with comparable academic performance and persistence. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone [phone]. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]