Final spring enrollment numbers show a sharp decrease in college student transfers, although … [+]
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Enrollment of college transfer students declined 9.6% this spring, the largest year-over-year decline in transfer enrollment during the pandemic and considerably steeper than the 6.5% decrease in non-transfer enrollment during the same period. That’s one of the main findings in a report released today by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC).
The slide in overall transfer numbers was greater than the 7.9% decrease reported in April, which was based on 74% of the Clearinghouse’s participating institutions and 8.8 million undergraduate students. This latest report, entitled COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress: Final Look Spring 2021 Report, is based on 94% of Clearinghouse institutions and 11.3 million undergraduate students (including 737,000 transfer students) reported as of April 22. It’s the end-of-term NSCRC report for the spring, 2021 semester.
The NSCRC report series is supported by the Ascendium Education Group and ECMC Foundation.
Community Colleges Again Are the Hardest Hit Sector
Transfer declines were greatest in the community college sector, which saw a 16.3% loss. This continues the trend of community colleges experiencing the largest enrollment decreases of any sector throughout the pandemic period.
The loss is twice the size of the enrollment decrease observed a year ago, and it was observed for all demographic groups – white, Black, Latinx, and Asian transfer enrollment all dropped significantly at community colleges. The transfer loss comes on top of a 13% decline in enrollment of non-transfer community college students.
Public Four-Year Universities Fared Better
In contrast to two-year colleges, enrollments at public four-year institutions saw only a small – 1.5% – dip in student transfers year over year.
Other types of four-year universities experienced larger declines in transfers – a 4.9% decrease at private, nonprofit institutions and a 9.9% drop-off at private for-profit schools.
At primarily online institutions, where more than 90% of students enrolled exclusively online before the pandemic, there was a steep 7.7% decline in transfer students, leading to a small overall enrollment decrease of 1.2% this spring, compared to a 1.6% increase last spring.
At public four-year colleges, white and Black transfers declined 6.2% and 2.8%, respectively; both of those declines were smaller than in the previous year. Latinx and Asian transfer students grew nearly 2%. In fact, Latinx transfer students saw the largest percentage point change of any racial/ethnic group in the public four-year sector, improving from a decrease of 2.4% last spring to a 1.8% increase this spring.
Different Types of Transfer
Student mobility between institutions takes place in several different directions, and not all of them showed the same pattern:
- Reverse transfers, in which four-year college students transfer into two-year colleges, showed the largest decrease at 18%;
- Lateral transfers where students transfer from one two-year college to another or between four-year universities was down 12.6%;
- Upward transfers, where students transfer from a two year college to a four-year institution were up by 1.5%, making it the only pathway to see an increase. Upward transfers increased for traditional college-age students (+7.6%), students aged 30 and older (+3.7%), women (+4.3%), Latinx (+3.2%), and Asian students (+5.8%); they decreased for men (-2.8%), Black (-1.2%), and white (-.1%) students.
Men and Traditional College-age Students Show Larger Transfer Decreases
Male transfer students continued to decrease during the spring, and the decrease was observed for all age groups. Quoting from the NSCRC press release, “Overall transfer enrollments among men fell at double the rate of women (-13.7% and -6.5%, respectively) after dropping at similar rates last spring (-7.2% and -5.9%, respectively).”
Last spring, upward transfers for women continuing in college from the prior fall declined slightly more than for men (-9.8% vs. -8.2%, respectively). This spring, however, the pattern was dramatically different, with upward transfers increasing 7.3% for women, and declining 5.1% for men.
Traditional college-age students (18- to 24-years old) showed much larger decreases in transfer enrollment (13.6%) compared to a decrease of only 2.5% for students 30 and older.
Implications
Commenting on the report, Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said,“This semester marks the steepest year-over-year decline in overall transfer enrollment since the pandemic began, with a 10% drop over last spring in the number of students who changed institutions from their most recent prior enrollment. As a comparison, non-transfer students declined by only 6.5%. Making sure that students remain able to access all available opportunities to reach their goals, including through transfer, is critical to supporting their success amid the disruptions of the pandemic.”
Transferring between institutions can be difficult under the best of circumstances so the general erosion of transfer students during the pandemic does not come as a surprise. If there is any good news to be found in the latest report it’s that upward transfers from two-year to four-year institutions appear to have been less affected by the pandemic than all other pathways. Whether this is due to recent efforts to simplify the transfer process as much as possible, or reflects a growing preference for bachelor’s degrees over two year degrees is not clear.
Nonetheless, opportunities for upward transfer appear to be unevenly pursued by different student groups. And both transfer and non-transfer enrollments in the nation’s community colleges still show no signs of a rebound from their pandemic-related doldrums.
About NSCRC
The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations to gather accurate longitudinal data the can be used to guide educational policy decisions.
NSCRC analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represent 97% of the nation’s postsecondary enrollment in Title IV degree-granting institutions in the U.S., as of 2018.
