Students' Characteristics that Facilitate the Transfer from Two-Year to Four-Year Colleges

This article investigates the relative importance of social and academic background factors on the probability of transfer to a four-year college for a random sample of 2,500 students who entered community college within two years of graduation from high school in 1980. By four years after graduation from high school, 24.3 percent of those students had transferred to a four-year college. Factors describing the students' academic performance in community college were the strongest predictors of the eventual transfer in a path analysis design, but family background and high school factors exerted important indirect effects. Although broader access to community colleges may appear to increase educational opportunities for socially and academically disadvantaged students, the fact that more advanced students with better academic preparation in high school actually transfer to four-year colleges suggests that the community college experience may perpetuate, rather than ameliorate, social stratification in higher education.