Academic Performance of Community College Transfers: Psychological, Sociodemographic, and Educational Correlates

Abstract

This study focuses on the academic performance of community college transfer students at four-year institutions. It uses a nationally representative sample from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88/2000) and the Postsecondary Education Transcript Study (PETS). Results from an Ordinary Least Squares regression model suggest that community college transfers' academic performance can be explained by gender, race/ethnicity, self-concept, GPA at community colleges, remediation in math, college involvement, and simultaneous enrollment. These findings have important implications for policy-makers and practitioners at community colleges and four-year institutions.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Association for Institutional Research, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Science Foundation, and the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative for supporting this research. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.

Notes

Note. Due to their small sample sizes, Asian, American Indian, and Mixed were combined into the “Other” category in the OLS regression analysis. Data were rounded to the nearest 10 and within columns raw numbers may not add up to the column total due to rounding.

*p < .05, **p < .01.