Abstract
Community colleges and other open-access two-year campuses provide an important pathway to higher education; however, a surprisingly small proportion of these students successfully transfer to and graduate from a bachelor’s degree-granting institution. The present study examined barriers and challenges students faced as they built their sense of self-efficacy as transfer students. We conducted interviews with 65 prospective or recent transfer students, including “internal” transfers (moving from an open-access predominantly two-year campus to their university’s flagship campus) and “external” transfers (moving from a community college to the university’s most selective campus). Our results indicate that both internal and external transfer students experienced challenges in terms of obtaining accurate information about transfer (transfer student capital, or “TSC”), but these challenges were easier to overcome for internal transfers, in part due to their social support networks. While both sets of transfer students utilized social support networks as an informal source of TSC, internal transfer students reported a more extensive social support network. Gaining accurate information about transfer and being supported by members of their social networks seemed to boost self-efficacy for transfer as well as adjustment during the post-transfer experience period. Recommendations for sending and receiving institutions are provided.
Highlights
Each year, millions of students begin their pathway to a bachelor’s degree at a community college or other open-access predominantly two-year institution (Jenkins and Fink, 2020)
We examined barriers and challenges to the internal and external transfer process in the context of three key factors: transfer student capital (TSC), social support, and self-efficacy for transfer
Our findings indicate that students with active sources of transfer student capital” (TSC) experienced an easier transfer process, whereas those without social and academic networks at both the sending and receiving institution felt less confident in their choices, unsupported, and in some cases, discouraged from belonging to the new institution
Summary
Millions of students begin their pathway to a bachelor’s degree at a community college or other open-access predominantly two-year institution (Jenkins and Fink, 2020). The pathway from a two-year campus (the “sending institution”) through their destination four-year college or university (the “receiving institution”) may be Transfer Student Experience influenced by multiple individual and institutional factors. In disparate strands of the literature, researchers have identified “transfer student capital” (TSC), self-efficacy, and social support as enablers of successful transfer (e.g., Laanan et al, 2011; Wang et al, 2017; Mobley and Brawner, 2019); few studies have examined the potential interplay between those factors during the transfer process. We briefly discuss the context of open-access predominantly two-year campuses such as those included in our study, and how that context may be similar or different from that of community colleges
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