Enhancing the Community College Transfer Pathway:  Exploring Aspects of Transfer Receptivity at 4-Year Institutions in Engineering

Community college transfer pathways may play a critical role in realizing broadened participation in engineering; Community colleges serve as an important access-oriented pathway through the postsecondary system in the United States, and also depend on 4-year institutions to streamline vertical transfer. The extent to which 4-year institutions are receptive to community college transfer as a viable pathway to engineering degrees may play a significant role in its efficacy. This dissertation explores a few aspects of transfer receptivity at 4-year institutions to understand how they relate to the efficacy of vertical transfer pathways in engineering disciplines. The first manuscript is a case study of an articulation agreement partnership between one 4-year institution and two public community college partners. The second manuscript examines how transfer policies and institutional characteristics of 4-year institutions in the U.S. relate to the enrollment, graduation and reporting of transfer students in engineering. I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies across both manuscripts. The results of these studies revealed that: 1) specific challenges for transfer in engineering suggest that adequate examinations of transfer receptivity need be discipline-specific, 2) institutions encounter dissonance when simultaneously managing aims to increase access and prestige, 3) there is a need for shifts in policy and ranking systems that incentivize increases and improvements in vertical transfer, 4) there is a need for more transparency of transfer-related policies and transfer student data, and 5) our understanding of transfer matriculation remains well ahead of graduation outcomes.