Transfer Assessment Tool

Based on The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practices for Two- and Four-Year Colleges, published in 2016 by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College (CCRC). Please note that this tool will be updated in late 2024 with the forthcoming release of The Transfer Playbook 2.0. 

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 for students of color and low-income students. 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.
  • Equitable outcomes and access: For Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and low-income 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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Domain 1

Prioritize Transfer
The college president and other senior leaders emphasize in their senior meetings, trustee meetings, and communications across the college that improving student outcomes in transfer and bachelor’s attainment are important.
Transfer student success is reflected as a core priority in the college’s strategic documents (e.g., strategic plan, accreditation self-study, student success planning documents, fundraising plans, etc.).
The college regularly collects and reports data on transfer and bachelor’s attainment outcomes to the president and senior team, academic departments, and student services departments that work on transfer.
College leaders evaluate disaggregated data on rates of transfer and bachelor’s attainment by student race/ethnicity (i.e., Black, Latino/a, Native American, and Pacific Islander) and income level and make plans to improve outcomes for those groups with lower outcomes.
Substantial resources are dedicated to the transfer function, with a focus on building and maintaining strong transfer pathways and ensuring transfer-specific student advising.
The college has dedicated staff with significant responsibility for improving student outcomes in transfer and bachelor’s attainment.

Domain 2

Create Clear, Rigorous Program Pathways
Programs of study for transfer students are clearly mapped with information about recommended courses, progress milestones, and applied learning/career opportunities.
Coursework in transfer programs and extra-curricular activities provide students with rigorous preparation aligned to expectations for their junior and senior years.
Alternatives to 2+2 transfer pathways have been developed for circumstances where those are not the best routes to a bachelor’s degree.
Faculty meet at least annually with their four-year counterparts to examine data by program, resulting in specific actions for improving student transfer outcomes.
The college has in place at least one transformational model in partnership with a college or university that delivers much better transfer outcomes (e.g., dual admission, guaranteed transfer, co-location).

Domain 3

Provide Tailored Transfer Advising
All students are exposed early in their academic careers to the expectation of and options for transfer to a four-year college.
The college sets a goal for student decisions on transfer major and destination (e.g., all students decide by 30 credits) and aligns advisors; professional development and accountability to that goal.
Every new student is helped—as early as possible—to explore career and transfer options, choose a program of study, and develop a full-program plan.
Students’ progress in fulfilling requirements for their intended major/transfer-destination institution is monitored, and support is provided to students at risk of falling off-plan.
Advisors provide counseling that helps students develop financial plans for their entire undergraduate education—including completion of both sub-baccalaureate credentials and a bachelor’s degree.
In crafting its advising services, the college considers the particular needs of different student groups, including by race/ethnicity, income level, age, and family status.
The college website, and other “marketing” materials, include accurate, easy to access information and points of contact for students seeking to transfer.

Domain 4

Strategies for Building Strong Transfer Partnerships
The president and other college leaders have trusting relationships with colleagues at partner four-year colleges and regularly communicate with them about transfer student goals, outcomes, and advising/supports.
A critical mass of faculty and staff from both institutions regularly communicates and collaborates to improve transfer student success.
At least annually, the community college and partner four-year institutions share data on transfer student outcomes, discuss areas for improvements, and follow through to implement changes.
The two institutions jointly invest in shared support services and strategic initiatives to benefit transfer students.
The community college and its major four-year partners each has at least one “transfer champion” who serves as a point person for the exchange of information and the raising of concerns between the partners.
The college works to build partnerships with institutions that serve large numbers of students of color (HBCUs, HSIs, and others with substantial numbers of Black, Latino, Native American, and/or Pacific Islander students).

Transfer Assessment Inquiry Guide

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?

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?