The latest research report from Davis Jenkins and John Fink of the Community College Resource Center focuses on partnerships between two- and four-year institutions that enable community college entrants to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a bachelor’s degree. Takes Two To Tango: Essential Practices of Highly Effective Transfer Partnerships describes the process undertaken to identify cross-sector partnerships that are high performers for transfer success. Researchers examined records from the National Student Clearinghouse for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide and interviewed more than 350 faculty members, staff and transfer students.
Through this research the authors identified a set of essential transfer practices that fall into three broad strategies: (a) make transfer a priority, (b) create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction, and (c) provide tailored transfer advising.
The Interstate Passport fully supports these strategies and will step up efforts in the year ahead both to align institutions’ Passport Blocks with programmatic pathways and to strengthen strategies and practices for academic advisors in assisting transfer students.
First published online in August 2017, the full report is available in the October 1, 2017 issue of Community College Review (Sage Publications).