Universities, community colleges partner to help transfer students earn degrees

As four-year colleges and universities look for ways to boost enrollment and reach underrepresented students, a growing number are focused on community college transfer students. At some of the nation’s most selective colleges, transfer acceptance rates are now higher than first-year acceptance rates. Special correspondent Hari Sreenivasan reports for our series, "Rethinking College."

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  • Judy Woodruff:

    As four-year colleges and universities look for ways to boost enrollment and reach underrepresented students, a growing number are focused on community colleges, transfer students, who tend to be racially and socioeconomically diverse.

    At some of the nation's most selective colleges, transfer acceptance rates are now higher than first-year acceptance rates. But many community college students still struggle with the transfer process and completing their degrees.

    Special correspondent Hari Sreenivasan reports for our series Rethinking College.

  • Student:

    Being a transfer student comes with struggles.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    It has been a topic on social media, YouTube.

  • Student:

    Not everyone is going to transfer well.

  • Student:

    There are some problems with community colleges.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    TikToks.

  • Student:

    One, transferability.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    And even an NBC sitcom.

  • Actor:

    Will you two be attending tomorrow's transfer ceremony to send off all the students leaving for so-called real schools?

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    The community college transfer process is often a bumpy ride. Most students at a community college wants to earn a bachelor's degree, but very few do.

    According to the Community College Research Center, out of every 100 students who want to, only 31 will transfer to a four-year institution, and only 14 will complete a bachelor's degree. One of the biggest hurdles, transferring credits.

    Students typically lose about 40 percent of their credits when they transfer, often due to not taking the right courses for their majors, or the four-year institution not accepting their credits. That hurdle and others mean that very few transfer students, only 8 percent, are able to successfully complete one of the cheapest route to a bachelor's degree, two years at a community college and two years at a four-year institution.

    Twenty-five-year-old Northern Virginia resident Jennifer Aguilar is on track to do that.

  • Jennifer Aguilar, College Student:

    I didn't actually have to fill out any applications to come to George Mason. They did all of the paperwork for me. All I had to do was just keep my good grades, meet with my adviser, sign up for classes, and they just pretty much took care of the whole thing.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Aguilar graduated last spring with an associate's degree from Northern Virginia Community College, or NOVA. She is now in her first semester at George Mason University and enrolled in a unique transfer partnership between the institutions called ADVANCE.

    The goal of the program is to help students like Aguilar, who want to earn a bachelor's degree, but may face some challenges getting there.

  • Jennifer Aguilar:

    I didn't think I would be attending George Mason. It feels really unreal, to be honest. Right out of high school, I didn't want to go to college, but I just couldn't afford not even community college.

    I just started working at various restaurants. And then it just got to a point that I just told myself, like, I need to do something with my life. I want to get an education. I have always had a dream of becoming a psychologist.

  • Person:

    ADVANCE is a partnership between NOVA and…

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Launched in the fall of 2018, ADVANCE offers eligible NOVA students automatic admission at George Mason while they're completing their associate's degree.

    On a recent evening, ADVANCE students and their families gathered for a welcome event on the George Mason campus. ADVANCE is one of a small, but growing number of dual admission programs around the country between two-year and four-year institutions designed to ease the transfer process.

    But NOVA and George Mason have implemented a number of other supports as well, including 87 academic pathways or majors that allow ADVANCE students to earn an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree in four years. That educational route saves ADVANCE students about $15,000, compared to students who spent four years at George Mason.

    Special financial aid for ADVANCE students helps reduce those costs even.

  • Anne Kress, President, Northern Virginia Community College:

    At its heart ADVANCE is about making transfer effective.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Anne Kress is the president of NOVA, the second largest community college in the United States, with more than 75,000 students across six campuses.

  • Anne Kress:

    When you look at our partnership with Mason, even before ADVANCE, we sent the majority of our transfer students to Mason.

    But when you looked at their ability to graduate within two years after transferring to Mason, it wasn't what it should be. And so that's really the nexus of ADVANCE. We're really giving students that transparent information, so they know right from the jump when they sign up exactly what it's going to take to graduate in two years or less. And, in fact, more than 90 percent of the ADVANCE students now do that.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    The program, which is open to all NOVA students who meet eligibility criteria, including a 2.0 GPA or higher, has grown from about 150 students four years ago to 3,300 today.

    About 40 percent are low-income, and a majority are students of color; 83 percent of ADVANCE students are still enrolled at NOVA one year after joining the program. That's 20 points higher than the national one-year retention rate for community college students.

    NOVA students in the program have access to the George Mason campus, and some take classes there as part of their major.

  • Jennifer Aguilar:

    Since I already had been here because of my previous NOVA experience, I felt really welcome here. I knew my way around the library because I usually would spend my time there. And, to be honest, like, I feel like this is my home now.

  • Jason Dodge, Director, ADVANCE:

    We do have students who are being integrated socially, academically into the Mason culture before making that hard transfer.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Jason Dodge is the director of the ADVANCE program. He and his team are employees of NOVA and George Mason. The program is funded using state and tuition dollars from both institutions and contributions from donors.

  • Jason Dodge:

    We have moved from this idea of being transfer-ready to being major-ready. We know the differences between being ready to transfer with an English degree, like I did from a community college or university. And the differences with that and engineering are vastly different. That first year is crucial.

    And so we have done a lot within that first year to bolster the services that we have.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Those services include regular meetings with ADVANCE coaches, who help students navigate courses and offer supports for challenges outside of the classroom.

  • Sabrey Stewart, ADVANCE Academic Coach:

    So, what did you do like in that moment, where…

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Sabrey Stewart is one of those coaches. Today, she works with more than 500 ADVANCE students. But about 10 years ago, she was a student at NOVA who found the transfer process difficult to navigate.

  • Sabrey Stewart:

    I was low-income, so I really wanted to make sure the money that was going towards my classes was going to count and it would transfer to a bachelor's degree.

    I work with a huge population of low-income students at NOVA. And I think it's not only understanding what that means from the financial aid standpoint, from a credit standpoint, but from a life standpoint. I understand what it's like for them to have to work to pay the bills, or to contribute financially to their family, and the weight that they carry with that.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    One of the most important ways students are supported is less visible.

  • Amy Richardson, Northern Virginia Community College:

    We actually have enough courses to fill that pathway.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Faculty collaborations and meetings.

  • Colin Reagle, George Mason University:

    We needed to free up those three credits and wanted to give them more hands on.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Like the one between Amy Richardson, an assistant professor of engineering at NOVA, and Colin Reagle, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at George Mason.

    These meetings have been essential. That's according to Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University. But he says it's not always easy.

  • Gregory Washington, President, George Mason University:

    It requires people to sit together in a room. It requires people on both ends to modify classes, to make them work together. So all of those hurdles are real ones, but, if we provide the proper pathway, they actually can achieve and they will be successful.

    We can say that we have learned that.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    Jennifer Aguilar says, after she graduates, she hopes to get a masters and possibly a Ph.D..

  • Jennifer Aguilar:

    There's not a lot of psychologists that speak Spanish. I can bring out my Spanish and help the community and just help people like me.

  • Hari Sreenivasan:

    George Mason is currently expanding the ADVANCE model to other community colleges around the state.

    For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Hari Sreenivasan in Northern Virginia.

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