SUNY Transfer Assessment Tool

Based on Transfer Playbook 2.0: A Practical Guide for Achieving Excellence in Transfer and Bachelor’s Attainment for Community College Students, published in 2025 by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College (CCRC). 

The items in this assessment tool reflect strong practices observed through Aspen and CCRC’s research and direct engagements with excellent community colleges, which we define as those achieving high and improving levels of student success (1) both while in college and after graduation (2) overall and when data are disaggregated. The assessment tool is organized into several domains of practice emerging from The Transfer Playbook and prompts users to rate their institution’s adoption of each item within each domain. Once complete, a summary of scores will allow colleges to identify strengths and weaknesses in specific practices aligned to each item and to observe which domains most need improvement. 

In this assessment tool, the term “student success” has the following meaning:

  • Success in college: Students (1) learn and (2) complete credentials.
  • Success after college: Students (1) get good jobs and/or (2) transfer and attain a bachelor’s degree.
  • Outcomes and access for all students: The college ensures high absolute rates and minimizes gaps in (1) learning and completion outcomes for students in college, (2) transfer and workforce outcomes for students after college, and (3) enrollment of different demographic groups relative to the college’s service area.

Directions: Assess the extent to which your college engages each of the following practices, according to the scoring rubric.

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Strategy 1

Prioritize Transfer at the Executive Level to Achieve Sustainable Success at Scale
There is a shared, president-led vision for the college's transfer impacts, clearly communicated with key stakeholders.
Transfer efforts (including partnerships) are well resourced and include individual and shared investments, funding, and dedicated staff.
Transfer partnerships are comprised of cabinet-supported teams that advance strategy, implementation, relationship-building, and collaboration.
The college does not solely rely on credit articulation agreements as the main tool for helping students transfer and instead adopts a more comprehensive model that covers the transfer student experience from beginning to end.
Transfer strategies are tailored to regional needs and demographics.
The college takes an "every student could be a transfer student” approach.
The college provides increased attention to affordability and financial aid for transfer students.
Transfer student-centered systems leverage automation, technology, and predictable processes to improve student experiences at scale.
Actionable, disaggregated data is leveraged to promote accountability, support case-making, and inform continuous improvement for the transfer student experience.

Strategy 2

Align Program Pathways and High-Quality Instruction to Promote Timely Bachelor’s Completion within a Major
The college creates and maintains clear, term-by-term, four-year maps within each major that set expectations for timely completion and are adjustable for part-time students.
Program pathways frontload courses that inspire early major exploration, commitment, or changes.
Students can expect at least one major-specific course each term.
Course sequences embed college-level, program-specific math and English in the first year.
Systems are in place so that tailored education plans are developed for students within their first term.
Advisors work with students to create customized plans that support timely completion while balancing students’ work and family responsibilities.
Course maps and tailored education plans are embedded into student information and degree audit systems.
Advisors work with students to adjust course schedules and modalities to enable plan completion.
There are opportunities for faculty to build cross-sector relationships, develop and maintain pathways, and align and strengthen curriculum and instruction with transfer partners.
Content on transfer student needs is included in faculty professional development.
Student success in gateway courses, writing, and STEM is enhanced through robust instruction and academic services.

Strategy 3

Tailor Transfer Advising and Nonacademic Supports to Foster Trust and Engagement
Advising is inevitable for transfer students throughout their time at the college.
Transfer students are engaged before, during, and after they transition to a partner university.
Transfer outreach and advising begins in high school.
Advisors are hired and trained to practice empathy for transfer students.
Investments are made for advisors to have mandatory, routine, transfer-specific professional development.
Advising protocols start with students’ career goals.
There are quick on-ramps to career advising and high-impact experiences at the college.
The college offers activities that foster community-building, belonging, and inclusion informed by transfer student demographics and needs.
Attention is paid to transfer students’ basic and nonacademic needs.

SUNY Transfer Assessment Inquiry Guide

SUNY Transfer Assessment Inquiry Questions

Where do you see stronger and weaker outcomes in your transfer student outcomes data? Where are the largest differences in outcomes among different student groups? What is improving? What is not?

Where are your transfer assessment results strongest and weakest?

  1. In making transfer students a priority by incorporating that into strategic priorities, data use, resource allocation, and executive communications?
  2. In ensuring clear programmatic pathways for every student by creating clear course sequences, regularly updating them with partners, and collaborating with K-12 schools?
  3. In dedicated transfer advising that is inescapable, rooted in clear milestones for student decisions, and supported by professional development and accountability for advisors?
  4. In partnering with colleges/universities to set and monitor student transfer goals, maintain strong communications, and meet to assess data and continuously improve?

How are your transfer student outcomes data and assessment results connected? 

  1. Where are your transfer outcomes strongest? Does anything in your transfer assessment responses explain those strengths?
  2. Where your transfer outcomes are weak, what practice weaknesses emerge from the assessment that might explain that? Among those weaknesses, what seems most important? Example: strong or weak transfer-out rates or post-transfer bachelor’s attainment rates could be explained by the presence (or lack) of clear four-year program maps or systems to help every student choose make pre-major and transfer destination decisions in their first year.

What do your results and regional information tell you about your four-year partnerships?

  1. Which four-year partners take the most transfer students from your community college? Which have the strongest outcomes? Do they overlap? What might this suggest about increasing (or reducing) the number of students who transfer to these institutions? What partnerships need to be strengthened to improve outcomes?
  2. Which four-year colleges and universities in your region could benefit from your students? Which need additional enrollment? Which are seeking the kinds of diversity reflected in your student population?

How are your transfer programs and enrollments connected to good jobs in your region?

  1. Which employers in your region typically offer good jobs to people with bachelor’s degrees (e.g., teachers, nurses, financial services managers)? Among these jobs, where are worker shortages most acute? Where do employers expect strong future demand?
  2. To what extent are your students transferring and completing bachelor’s degrees in fields typically aligned to good jobs in your region that require (or prefer) a bachelor’s degree?
     

Next Steps

  1. What 1-5 most important things have you uncovered about your transfer and bachelor’s completion data? What do you most want to improve?
  2. What 1-5 most important things have you uncovered about transfer practices from your assessment tool and the above questions? Among the areas of weakness, what few changes would make the biggest positive difference?
  3. What immediate steps can you take to ensure action on these lessons learned?

SUNY Transfer Assessment Data Queries

Transfer to bachelor’s degree programs: At what rate do your college’s students transfer to a bachelor’s degree program within two or three years of entry? How are the numbers and rates trending? How do the transfer rates compare with national and peer institutions’ averages? How do transfer rates vary by student demographics and program of study? 

Transfer to bachelor’s degree programs (with award): What percentage and number of your college’s students who transfer to a bachelor’s program also complete an associate degree or other award before transferring? Do students who transfer with an award have different bachelor’s attainment rates than those who do not? How does this vary by student demographics, program of study, and four-year destination?

Bachelor’s completion rate six years after community college entry: What are your college’s overall and disaggregated bachelor’s completion rates six years after students entered your community college? How do these compare with the national and peer institutions’ averages? How do bachelor’s completion rates differ by program of study taken at the community college? By student demographics? 

Students with a full academic/transfer plan: How many students (and what share of total college enrollment) have a full pre-major transfer plan in place? How many students with such a plan have chosen a priority transfer destination? How many have a plan in place within their first academic year (30 credits)? How does this vary by student demographic? 

Students staying on a full academic/transfer plan: How many students—and what share of students with transfer plans—are still on track after 15 credit hours? 30 credit hours? 45 credit hours? How do these outcomes vary by student demographics? 

Transfer destinations: Which four-year institutions (or baccalaureate-granting community colleges) do your students most frequently transfer to? How do transfer-out numbers and bachelor’s completion rates differ among those frequent transfer partners, overall and among different demographic groups? 

Bachelor’s demand in the regional labor market: Which jobs in your region typically require (or prefer) at least a bachelor’s degree and offer substantial numbers of job opportunities? Do the programs taken by your pre-transfer students set them up for bachelor’s degrees that align with those jobs?