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Overview

A growing body of research underscores the urgent need to better understand how students use community colleges to launch their journey toward a baccalaureate in career-oriented disciplines and how to increase their success with transfer and degree completion.

Several studies have shown that without an increase in student transfer, California is likely to face serious workforce shortages in a number of high-growth, high-demand occupations such as accounting, engineering, nursing, and teaching and in emerging sectors like biotechnology, logistics, and clean/green technology.

To better understand how students travel through the state’s community colleges and universities (both public and private) to ultimately achieve a professional degree, the RP Group conducted a multi-year, comprehensive study focused on:

• The infrastructure for transfer between community colleges and four-year institutions in occupational disciplines

• Ways students used the community college system to prepare for transfer in high-demand disciplines (specifically, engineering, accounting, nursing, teacher education, and administration of justice)

• Factors that complicated and supported their journey

• Opportunities to increase students' completion of transfer and a degree

Research activities included:

• Conducting an extensive literature review on transfer in career-oriented disciplines

• Engaging over 450 educators from California Community Colleges and universities in identifying factors that affect transfer in occupational programs

• Mapping the educational pathways of 14,500 transfer students who traveled through California’s Community Colleges and universities (public and private) to achieve a bachelor’s degree in these disciplines

• Collecting perspectives from over 1,000 students about the factors that impacted their transfer journey

• Convening with community college and university practitioners, employers, and advocacy groups about ways to facilitate transfer in these majors