Copyright© 1999 by School Services of California, Inc.
Minority and Economically Disadvantaged
Community College Students Lag In Transfer
Rates To Four-Year Universities and Colleges
According to a recent L.A. Times article, African American students are less than half as likely as Caucasians to transfer from a community college to a University of California (UC) campus, and less than one-fifth as likely as Asians. Latinos fare a little better than African Americans, but not by much. The California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) reported that statewide, just 293 African American community college students transferred to UC campuses last year. By contrast, about 7,300 Caucasians and Asians transferred.
The L.A. Times article reported that transferring from community colleges to four-year universities was supposed to be the key to college dreams for California's poor and minority students. Instead, it has become a mechanism that reinforces some of the most troubling economic and racial inequalities in higher education.
In theory, no matter what a student's race or background - and even if the student performed poorly in high school - he or she can go from the nation's cheapest open-door public community colleges to some of the country's most elite universities via a liberal transfer policy. The L.A. Times reporter did note that transfers to UC comprise only one part of the college picture. California State University (CSU), accepts more than four times as many community college students and has more diversity in transfer statistics than UC.
The article was also critical of how well some community colleges prepare or encourage their students to transfer to UC or CSU. It was reported that some community colleges - with higher proportions of middle-class white and Asian students - simply appear to try harder. By contrast, among the least successful at generating transfers are schools serving largely African American and Latino populations. In interviews, a few minority students said they were actively discouraged from applying to UC or were urged to follow vocational tracks despite stating transferring as their goal.
A Different Look At Transfer Rates
Community College Chancellor Tom Nussbaum recently took a different approach to dealing with the perception that community colleges have low transfer rates. His approach was to look only at students who have declared transfer as their goal, not all students. The community college Management Information System (MIS) reports that 34%, about 499,450 (Fall 1997), declared transfer as a goal. Based on a number of factors, such as, number of units taken, how long it takes a student to matriculate, financial, family or other reasons, including taking the right courses the number of total transfers during an academic year would be approximately 100,000 students.
Based on the Chancellor's math, the community colleges are doing a lot better in transferring students to four-year institutions than the press reports. Currently, the community colleges transfer about 69,000 per year (10,500 to UC, 48,500 to CSU, and 10,000 to the private colleges). Additionally, we should keep in mind that the responsibility for preparing students to transfer is not solely a community college problem, UC and CSU must be active partners in this endeavor and the students themselves must also take the initiative to prepare themselves to shape their destiny.
-- Arnold Bray