Andrew Hibel, HigherEdJobs: Will you each please explain your role today working with the transfer student population and what led you to your current positions?
Lee Furbeck, Ph.D., Director of Undergraduate Admissions, Cleveland State University: I have been working directly with transfer students and transfer credit policies and practices for years, and although my current responsibilities are more comprehensive, Cleveland State enrolls almost as many new transfers as new freshmen each year. Understanding this population is crucial. In recent years, transfer students have become more of a focus for many institutions seeking to stabilize enrollment. However, there was a time when transfers really were the “forgotten” students. I enjoy being able to customize messages, recruitment, and programmatic offerings to meet transfer student needs.
Bruce Clemetsen, Vice President of Student Affairs, Linn-Benton Community College: I have been working in enrollment management and student affairs for many years at Linn-Benton Community College. I have been fortunate to be part of building and sustaining institutional partnerships involving secondary and post-secondary institutions. Being student-centric and taking a systems approach that integrates academic affairs and student services has resulted in some creative thinking to design educational pathways around improving student success.
Hibel: The phrase “swirling student” has become more popular in recent years. What is a swirling student and why are they more common today?
Furbeck: There are many enrollment patterns for swirling students or swirlers as they are called. We tend to think of a transfer student as someone who moves cleanly from one institution to another. Increasingly, students are moving back and forth between and amongst institutions – both two- and four-year schools – sometimes enrolling at multiple institutions simultaneously. Several factors have contributed to this enhanced mobility including more distance education options, enhanced partnerships between institutions and groups of institutions, and more nontraditional-aged students. The rising cost of higher education has led to an increased consumer mentality. Savvy students recognize that they can lower cost and enhance convenience by earning credits toward a degree at multiple institutions or by other means.
Clemetsen: Swirling is motivated by the interests of students to save money, keep on pace to complete in a reasonable amount of time, fit education around lifestyle, build an education experience that includes the perceived best learning opportunities -faculty, facilities, support services. Swirling is beginning to appear in the transfer from high school to post-secondary education as well. Students are completing college credit through AP & dual credit, while being supported to enroll in community college and/or university courses to fill out the senior year. These students may be attending post-secondary institutions nearby and online.
Hibel: What are the most common characteristics of the transfer or swirling student in terms of demographics and the timing of their transfer in their educational tenure?
Furbeck: The diversity of transfer students (and swirlers) is striking. No two seem to have followed the same path for the same reasons. Some are very intentional, and some have followed their paths as life changes or preferences have changed. They can vary from nineteen-year-olds enrolled full-time at a four-year school picking up courses at a local community college to adults with a bachelor’s degree seeking to learn a trade. These could also be students who have amassed credit from several institutions including a community college at which they were dually enrolled while in high school, an out-of-state school that they left, a school where they did some online courses, and a local institution offering evening and weekend courses.
Clemetsen: What may be more common is the practice among people seeking post-secondary education, rather than a specific population. Without institutional pathways designed to support the student who wants to stitch together an experience from multiple institutions, students must be assertive and confident in their ability to connect our often disparate policies and systems. Those who are consumer savvy quickly figure out how to leverage the benefits of the combination of institutional academic and co-curricular opportunities.
Hibel: Along with Alicia Moore, the two of you co-authored an article in Strategic Enrollment Quarterly discussing swirling students and institutional best practices to support these students. Looking from the student perspective–what are some key issues or barriers that transfer students face when moving from:
- A two- year institution to a four-year institution?
- A four- year institution to a two- year institution?
- A private to public university or vice versa?
- For-profit university to non-profit?
Furbeck: The barriers are similar, no matter which move students are making. There are more defined pathways from students moving from a two-year to a four-year school, but moving from a public to a private or crossing state lines is frequently more problematic as agreements may not exist. Similarly, there tend to be fewer agreements and partnerships in place between private and public schools in general, and decisions about transfer credit can come late when the coursework presented to the receiving institution has not been previously evaluated. Many two-year schools do not have the tools in place to allow students to learn quickly how their previously-earned credits may transfer in as the focus is on preparing students to transfer out. Students who have earned a bachelor’s degree may be surprised to learn how long it will take them to earn a specialized degree. Students moving both ways often learn too late that many courses needed for an applied degree won’t count toward a bachelor’s and vice versa. Schools with different accrediting bodies may accept or not accept credit from one another, depending on the circumstances.
Clemetsen: A common thread for transfers or swirling students is the change in culture – language (we all have our own favorite acronyms), processes, breaking into student networks, SIS services, and more. Students who have learned how to make a transition and navigate new cultures do fine, others do experience culture shock. I hear from our community college students how they are challenged by the size of the university environment, and university transfers express surprise about the inability to be anonymous in the classroom and that community college is more challenging as a result. Some of our transfers from private institutions to the community college are challenged by the diversity represented in the college. We can do a better job of preparing students to transfer and transition to other institutions, and we can improve our efforts at onboarding transfer students to a new culture.
Hibel: What are some of the institutional best practices to address these issues described above in order to assure transfer success, retention, and graduation rates?
Furbeck: Strong partnerships between institutions that share students are important, as is providing clear and early communication to students about how courses transfer and apply toward a degree. Students planning to transfer need early access to advising at the school where they eventually plan to earn a degree and at any other institution where they will complete a significant amount of coursework. Programmatic offerings allowing transfers to transition smoothly from one school to another and to be a part of the community are also important for many students. Institutions that identify curricular barriers for transfers – mismatches in course alignment, bottlenecks, potential duplication of course content, grading and repeat policies, etc. – and resolve them enable students who transfer in to experience success. Those that identify transfer patterns and work with students to accommodate also enhance student success.
Clemetsen: I have found that knowing where students come from, move to, and are co-enrolled with allows each institution to build academic and success services that ensure students can focus on learning and less time figuring out our curricular alignment and bureaucracies. Focus on the academic pathways so faculty trust the learning experience and collaboratively can work on alignment of learning outcomes. Looking at student course patterns is revealing. Learn where to remove academic bottlenecks, maybe even see the creation of unique academic experiences as a result of learning the strengths of each department. With strong academic pathways, synchronize the success services so students “move” successfully in pursuit of the academic program. The best compliment we can have is a complaint about a misalignment between institutions because the complaint is couched with the idea that the student perceives us as singular entity.
Hibel: Recent findings showed that students who completed a two-year degree before transferring to a four-year institution were more likely to complete the baccalaureate degree compared to those who did not. Additionally, those who transferred within one year of their enrollment also had a higher rate of completing baccalaureate degrees. What are the implications of these findings for institutions and how should they be addressed?
Furbeck: Students with non-continuous enrollment are less likely to reach their educational goals for a variety of reasons. Institutions should be aware of which non-graduates have not enrolled for the next semester and reach out to those students to keep them on track. Initiatives like reverse transfer (defined here as awarding a community college transfer student an associate’s degree based on work completed at the four-year school) and options like multi-term registration and a good degree-audit system can help keep students enrolled and on-track.
Clemetsen: Certainly, community colleges are doing a great deal of work to improve graduation rates as they are woefully low. As we study and make changes to improve student completion, we are mindful of addressing challenges related to increasing students’ engagement in order to increase continuous enrollment. With the majority of our students wanting to transfer, but only able to attend part-time, we know that “life gets in the way” more often than not. We are trying to find effective methods for staying connected with the student who stops out so that she/he knows the on-ramp back to their education is open. I also think the role of partnerships with community agencies and universities are important in keeping students motivated. The benefit of the partnership with the university is that students identify as a university student and they know they are making progress to the bachelor’s degree, even if they are carrying most of their credits at the community college. Allowing and supporting swirl connects the community college student to the university in a gradual and purposeful way, increasing the likelihood of bachelor degree attainment. Reverse transfer programs have been shown to support students in completing their bachelor’s and allowing the community college to celebrate a completion.
Hibel: In a May 2013 paper on transition and transfer, Phil Lewis mentioned that “transfer students do not want to be treated like freshmen, but their lack of knowledge about how their new institution functions often means that this is how they end up feeling anyway.” How do colleges and universities help transfer students avoid feeling this way?
Furbeck: By providing transfer students the information they need while also recognizing their previous experience as a student. The more opportunities transfer students have to customize the information they receive, the better. Options like a choice between an in-person or online orientation and customized onboarding for groups such as veterans, commuters, or adult students provide social networks and critical information.
Clemetsen: This is a great place for the “sending” institution to invest in preparing students to transfer. Some institutions have successful courses that address this issue. Students successfully learn about their future institution and develop a plan for getting to know the campus, culture, getting involved, meeting an advisor, and developing an initial academic plan. They also learn where important services are located so they access the same supports that assisted them at the community college.
Hibel: What are your recommendations for professional associations, conferences or resources that a higher education professional should pursue in order to enhance their knowledge of best practices for transfer students?
Furbeck: There have been several recent publications specifically about transfer students, such as the American Association for Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers’ (AACRAO) recent ” The Transfer Handbook: Promoting Student Success.” AACRAO also hosts an annual conference focused on topics of interest to professionals and policy-makers working with transfer students and transfer credit. With the growing interest in prior learning assessment, effective.0 partnerships, and dual enrollment, almost any meeting of registrar, admissions, advising, and counseling professionals is sure to have some content worth taking advantage of. Finally, there are many courses taught as part of higher education or adult learning graduate programs of which professionals can take advantage.
Clemetsen: AACRAO and others in enrollment management offer wonderful learning resources. Many other professional associations are talking about the data, orientation, partnership models, and support programs for transfer students. What is less common, and maybe more critical, are the conversations about learning outcome alignment and the leveraging of our diversity of curriculum. The students swirling among us are designing a curricular program they believe to be relevant to the work of the future we don’t even imagine yet. Maybe we can learn from them what the academic programs of the future will need to look like and it may be necessary to better leverage our unique institutional capacities to produce the necessary learning for the future.
Hibel: As leaders, what do you expect from your staff in order to further the unique mission of the work you do?
Furbeck: I expect my staff to treat each student as an individual. Listening and responding to the student’s unique needs and concerns is important, especially when students are bringing credit with them.
Clemetsen: Staff need to believe that every student has the potential to succeed. They are here for an experience that gets them to their goal. Staff have an obligation to help each student with their unique circumstances find a path to success, and staff are to learn from students where we need to build new paths that get them to their goals. We have high expectations for our students; students will rise to expectations.
Hibel: What drives you to continue to be engaged in this area of higher education?
Furbeck: In admissions, and especially when transfer students are involved, no two days are the same. I enjoy being able to assist students in meeting their educational goals and helping staff meet their professional goals. Nothing makes me smile like hearing that a former staff member is now a director or that a student who started in developmental math and English earned a graduate degree. You never know what’s possible!
Clemetsen: The work with partners and the feedback from students and community members about the value of the partnerships is the most rewarding. I see the benefit of the work in our community on a regular basis – former students who succeeded and describe how they could not have done it if not for the partnership, students who transferred when they never considered going to the university, and community members who love that their high schools, community college, and local university play well in the sandbox together.