Schudde, L. and H. Jabbar. 2024. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 178 PP.
Reviewed by Stephen J. Handel
“Nothing has to be better than anything,” says a character in the film, Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). The lament, ripped from its rightful context, nonetheless summarizes—uncharitably, I admit—higher education’s unsuccessful attempts to fully reform the community college transfer process.
If you are late to the plight of community college transfer students who wish to transfer to a four-year institution, there are only two essential insights you must grasp. First, while poor and other disadvantaged students attend community colleges in greater numbers than four-year institutions, the vast majority never succeed in transferring to four-year institutions or, if they do, fail to earn a bachelor’s degree. This has been true for as long as community colleges have existed.
The second insight is that most new, first-time community college students—perhaps as many as eight out of ten—express an explicit desire to earn a four-year degree. You need not adhere to the “cooling out function” of community colleges—the controversial idea that two-year institutions are complicit in the “structured” and “inevitable” suppression of their students’ greater academic ambitions—the result is still the same. Most students who enter community colleges want to transfer and never do.
During the past three decades, transfer advocates have implemented policies and programs designed to increase the number of students who transfer. Their efforts include establishing general education (GE) programs that are transferable across multiple two- and four-year institutions and common lower-division degree pathways that provide transfer students with a roadmap to prepare for a major after they transfer. Tireless, these advocates have also helped to build “transfer-affirming” campus cultures at many institutions. Such cultures embed a menu of transfer-student-centered efforts, such as orientation sessions and summer bridge programs, which help these students overcome the potential shock of moving from one institution to another.
Despite the individual efforts of these committed advocates, the plight of community college transfer students remains fraught. According to a 2024 report from the Community College Research Center and others, the national transfer-to-bachelor’s degree completion rate has advanced only two percentage points in the last decade and stands at a disappointingly low 16 percent (Velasco et al. 2024). For all of their efforts, it seems like transfer advocates, present writer included, have collectively tilled ground that has failed to produce a sustainable crop.
These ambivalent, even contradictory, thoughts crossed my mind when reading Discredited: Power, Privilege and Community College Transfer, a new book that tackles the dilemma of low transfer rates, using Texas as a case study. It is a slim book (178 pages) whose title delivers less invective than it promises. However, for those of us who have toiled in this field for most of our careers, a book devoted entirely to the transfer function is a welcomed event since the topic receives so little scholarly attention.
Discredited, written by Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar, professors at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Southern California respectively, makes two overarching points that are often overlooked in debates concerning transfer. Frist, the authors document the powerful role that four-year institutions play in the transfer process. Second, they describe the impact of administrators and faculty, mostly at four-year institutions, who are seen as restricting the pathway of transfer students toward the bachelor’s degree for reasons that may be labeled provincial and short-sighted.
The authors’ first contention—that four-year institutions are complicit in restricting the access of community college students to a bachelor’s degree—is not new. Still, it is often unrecognized by policymakers who seek to reform transfer by invoking solutions at two-year institutions. The truth, however, is that four-year institutions, especially highly-selective ones, regulate the transfer pipeline from start to finish. They do this via two mechanisms: admissions requirements and college course credit acceptance policies.
Like first-year students, community college transfer students must meet the receiving institution’s admissions requirements. If an applicant’s grades, test scores, letters of recommendation, and the like do not measure up to the four-year institution’s admissions criteria, the applicant has little chance of acceptance. If those requirements are opaque or provisional, as is often the case in transfer admissions, students are discouraged from applying in the first place.
Second, four-year institutions restrict transfer students’ academic ambitions by controlling the flow of college credits from a community college. Even if a transfer student meets the receiving institution’s admissions requirements, the four-year university may not accept the courses that students’ completed at a two-year college. This may force students to complete additional courses after transfer, costing them time and money.
The portability of college credit is at the center of Discredited. Since individual institutions control the curriculum at virtually every U.S. institution, the extent to which any given course may be applied for credit elsewhere is almost always a negotiated transaction. Like foreign currency, the exchange rate for college credit varies depending on the (academic) border the student plans to cross. Worse, some critics argue that such a transaction is an obvious conflict of interest in which campus gatekeepers privilege their own courses over others. The disturbing implication is that four-year institution leaders reject community college credit because they fear lower enrollments in their home-grown courses. This criticism paints four-year college representatives as shop-stewards ensuring that the production of their special widgets is sustained.*
Regardless of the reasons for restricted credit portability—intellectual integrity or academic larceny—transfer students are left having to negotiate an academic transaction in which they have little information or agency. Many students plan for transfer in a world in which they do not have access to definitive and comprehensive information about the applicability of their community college courses toward degree requirements at the four-year institution. Within such an intricate, secretive context even a little information may be dangerous, especially if it is delivered by an authority figure (a counselor, say) whose information may be outdated or misinformed.
The strength of Discredited is in describing the byzantine machinations of the transfer process in Texas. Over six years, Schudde and Jabbar followed the academic trajectory of 104 students who attended one of two community colleges in that state. They interviewed the students at various points in their college journey and recorded the challenges they faced. The authors’ also interviewed campus administrators and faculty members at two- and four-year institutions who were involved in the transfer process.
The authors interpret their interview results and other data-gathering methods within a theoretical framing they call a “field level” perspective. Rather than describe the transfer process as a singular institutional or student challenge, they argue that a broader framing is necessary, one that views transfer as a higher education system. Contextualizing transfer in this way allows readers (and presumably policymakers) to stand back to see how the process works as an integrated system. Their analytical starting point is not the idiosyncratic challenges of a single student, nor the inadequacy of a given two-year or four-year institution in serving transfer students. Rather, their analysis encompasses the efficacy of all elements of the transfer process—policies, programs, procedures, players—that advance or prevent student transfer success.
Schudde and Jabbar’s attempt to broaden our view of transfer as an integrated system is a reasonable choice, especially given students’ efforts to cross academic borders that may be impermeable. However, the framework does not appear to suggest unique or untried solutions. For example, in their last chapter, the authors emphasize the primacy of statewide policy levers to improve transfer. This is certainly consistent with the framing they bring to this topic. Yet their specific recommendations mandate, among other things, that four-year institutions accept transfer students’ general education (GE) courses, delineate clearer pathways for students to prepare for specific majors (especially highly-subscribed ones), and offer guaranteed admission when students meet specific thresholds.
None of these recommendations is inappropriate, only well-worn. All have been implemented in some form or another in multiple states. (For example, a 2022 Education Commission of the States survey reports that transferable GE plans have been implemented in 31 states [Whinnery and Peisach 2022]). If we are to believe the most recent data, however, such measures have had almost no impact on the national transfer rate.
The authors may well argue that their recommendations will pay dividends in Texas. Let’s hope that is true; there is surely nothing wrong with the reforms they advance except demonstrated efficacy. (To be fair, however, it is devilishly difficult to “prove” the singular impact of broad-based policy interventions of this kind).
In publishing a book that highlights the systemic structures that continue to plague the educational attainment of transfer students, Schudde and Jabbar contribute to the research literature that seeks redress for the shabby way higher education treats transfer students. Their book, if not a complete success, nonetheless, tells a compelling story whose happy ending has yet to be written.
But we need more. Transfer advocates, including this reviewer, have devoted decades to this topic. The result has been hardly a blip of improvement nationally. Yes, there have been many individual student transfer triumphs as well as successful regional efforts that have created stronger transfer pathways. The individuals responsible for those efforts are no less heroic for having achieved them (mostly in siloed campus ramparts) despite these disappointing national findings. Still, the transfer aspirations of most community college students remain unfulfilled.
So, what’s next? Settling on nothing would be cowardly in light of the students who demand our attention. But a return to the drawing board is surely required.
*[1] See Tracking Transfer: Community College Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment, Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Aspen Institute (College Excellence Program), and the National Student Clearinghouse.
References
GAO. See U. S. Government Accountability Office.
U. S. Government Accountability Office. 2017. Higher Education: Students Need More Information to Help Reduce Challenges in Transferring College Credits. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Velasco, T., J. Fink, M. Bedoya, D. Jenkins, and T. LaViolet. 2024. Community College Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment. New York: Columbia University, Community College Research Center.
Whinnery, E., and L. Peisach. 2022. 50-State Comparison: Transfer and Articulation Policies. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States.
About the Author
Stephen J. Handel is an experienced admissions and enrollment leader. He writes regularly on higher education issues.
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