Bringing Research to Policy and Practice

Research examining the relationship between initial community college enrollment and bachelor’s completion have shown mixed results with some studies indicating a clear penalty for community college enrollment and other studies showing no penalty, partly due to the point at which the given study began tracking the community college students: at initial community college entrance or after vertical transfer to a four-year college. We adopted the latter view while simultaneously controlling for student background characteristics, as well as high school and college contexts. Purpose: To examine the impact of taking the community college to four-year transfer pathway on bachelor’s degree completion