It was only meant to be a casual office chat about the democratizing force of community colleges when Dr. Huriya Jabbar, now an associate professor at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, walked into the office of Dr. Lauren Schudde, associate professor in COE’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy in 2015.
But as both young professors realized a common thread in their research, funded by the Greater Texas Foundation, on community college transfers to four-year universities, an idea was born.
”There is a lot of promise in community colleges but from the research I know that that was not always realized,” said Dr. Jabbar. ”The transfer rates can be really low, so I really wanted to look under the hood and talk to students, try to understand what is going on.”
Dr. Schudde was focused on public policies that impacted students’ ability to transfer credit from community colleges to universities. Meanwhile, Dr. Jabbar was following the experience of 100 students who wished to transfer from community colleges to universities where they could complete a bachelor’s degree. As they talked, Dr. Schudde suggested: Why not ask their current financier for the chance to combine the studies for a deeper look at the transfer process?
What they found was that even students who successfully transferred between institutions faced many hurdles, the transfer process is stressful to navigate, and that many students lost credits along the way.
Dr. Schudde and Dr. Jabbar reveal their findings in their new book, Discredited, which focuses on the challenges that students face to transfer credit hours between community colleges and four-year institutions and the policy recommendations the researchers make to increase equitable access to post-secondary education.
”We really think the field of higher education needs to stop thinking about this transfer problem as a community college problem, but really as a public higher education problem,” Dr. Jabbar said.
Through renewed funding from the Greater Texas Foundation, Dr. Schudde and Dr. Jabbar and their team of research assistants interviewed students annually over six years and followed up with community college and university staff at the start and end of their study.
The fall and spring semesters were dedicated to preparing what they would ask students and meeting with them as some transferred and others dropped out. In the summer, they analyzed their findings, adjusted and then repeated the process.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, they transitioned to Zoom interviews and extended their study an additional year to examine the impact of the global emergency on their educational journeys.
According to Dr. Schudde, the length and depth of the project provided a unique opportunity for graduate students to participate as research assistants for several years and build relationships with the students they followed.
”I think we were able to learn a lot about what their experiences were because it did not feel to the students as just some random researcher; it felt like someone they had continued to talk to,” Dr. Schudde said.
What they learned, Dr. Schudde said, is that students, often those from Black, Hispanic and low-income communities, are left to independently navigate complex and decentralized community college and university systems to figure out whether and how credits will transfer. If they are not able to do so, they risk not transferring or transferring and having to repeat courses and spend additional money. “So many of them don’t manage to transfer and they never get the degree they go in hoping to get,” Dr. Schudde said.
In the end, both researchers said their major takeaway is that state transfer policy focuses on easier fixes that only give students more information, but don’t fix problems inherent to the system. Although guided pathways resources exist at community colleges to help move the needle a little, they would need to translate directly to university pathways. The researchers recommend a requirement that associates degrees be counted toward a bachelor’s degree.
Currently, Dr. Schudde said every institution implements credit transfer policies in their own way. Under their recommendation, university departments could still decide how credits are counted, but all 60 credits would have to apply toward a bachelor’s degree, guaranteeing that students begin their university journey as juniors.
”What I want to see is an associate degree that transfers in this state,” Dr. Schudde said.
This, Dr. Jabbar said, could take the administrative burden off the students, smooth the transfer pipeline and uphold the promise of community colleges to open doors and improve access to higher education, especially for low-income students and students of color.
“If this transfer mechanism is faulty and isn’t working then it just reproduces and potentially even exacerbates the existing inequities and the stratification of higher education,” Dr. Jabbar said. “But if we can really realize this potential of community colleges, it can be a low-cost, easy entryway of providing broader access to higher education.”
