Why Only 14% of Community College Students Earn Bachelor’s Degrees

As we prepare to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Kaplan Educational Foundation (KEF) next year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the parallel progress of this organization and my own life. My formative years as a student and as a professional have been distinctively shaped by KEF. I’m deeply grateful for its impact - and I’m determined to draw on the lessons I’ve learned along the way to make the years ahead for KEF even better.

Looking at my personal story, it would be easy to conclude that the odds were against me. My single mother raised me and my brother in a small apartment on the Queens-Brooklyn border. I attended a massive high school with over 4,000 students and a graduation rate that barely hit 30 percent. Frequent violent incidents led to my school being featured on the front of the New York Post as one of the “Dirty Dozen” worst schools in New York City.

I was eager to attend a four-year college, but I ended up enrolling at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) while working part-time in a state assemblyman’s office. A key moment came when I received invaluable guidance and financial support as a member of KEF’s 3rd cohort, transferring to Smith College and graduating 14 years ago.

Sure, I worked hard. But I’m still astonished by how much help, from so many people, catapulted me forward. I went from pretty modest origins to earning a diploma from a college long associated with the East Coast elite. After several different post-college jobs, I ended up running the same leadership and education support organization that had such a transformational effect on my own life.

My personal trajectory has got me thinking not only about my own good fortune, but about how we can make programmatic and structural changes that provide stepping stones to opportunity for many more young people like me. What are we doing right - and what could we be doing better?

Our efforts to improve community college transfer definitely face strong headwinds. Although four out of five entering community college students aspire to earn bachelor’s degrees, just 30 percent actually transfer to four-year schools. Only 14 percent end up earning BAs. But I’m convinced we can move the needle.

That starts with a shift in mindset and expectations. We can’t underestimate the promise of community college students. I still have vivid memories of being treated as “less than” when I attended a fundraiser as an ambitious 19-year-old: a potentially valuable professional contact had little interest in talking to me when they learned I was enrolled at BMCC. But many promising students have good reasons to start at an open-access institution. If their goal is to reach a selective college, the right supports can put a four-year degree from a “name brand” school within reach. What’s more, once I was enrolled at Smith, I came to recognize just how much value I could bring to others not despite the challenges I had faced but because of them.

As for concrete policy and practice, here are four lessons that are guiding my thinking as we prepare for KEF’s next 20 years. They all fall under the theme “it takes a village”: multiple stakeholders need to work together to streamline what’s often a needlessly complex transfer process.

Start early - in high school - to build awareness of community college transfer opportunities. When I went to work for KEF for the first time, helping recruit new scholars just after graduating from Smith, I quickly discovered that many students we wanted to help with the practical details of transfer to selective four-year colleges just weren’t aware of impending deadlines and how work it would take to prepare for rigorous applications. That planted the seeds for one of our newest initiatives at KEF, the Community College Bridge Program. We and our community college partners in the CUNY system work directly with NYC public high schools to put transfer on the radar of promising students and help them plan ahead for an accessible and affordable path to a degree from a four-year college. Now, we will be able to reach 150 young people from underserved communities much sooner. A crucial three-year grant from the Ichigo Foundation will enable our Bridge Program to assist students in selecting the best community college environment, taking the appropriate courses needed for transfer, and choosing the most rewarding extracurricular activities and internships. All this will help ensure that these students have the best possible community college experience while positioning them for successful transfer to — and graduate from — a four-year institution.
Two and four-year schools must collaborate to ensure that transfer credits count - and to share that information with students. I’m closely following Transfer Explorer, a tool developed by the influential not-for-profit ITHAKA S+R. It directly tackles the core information challenge so many students face when they try to navigate the transfer process. It’s a public, national credit mobility website, currently in its beta release using data from institutions in four states. Every student who uses it can create a personal wallet of courses they have taken or plan to take. Then they can see which courses will be accepted for transfer credit and apply to degree requirements at schools that are members of Transfer Explorer. This approach builds on another very successful project that ITHAKA helped create, the CUNY Transfer Explorer, or T-Rex. In fact, it’s so promising that we’re creating a new Transfer Hub at KEF that’s designed to give community college students a personalized guide to make sure their credits count when they plan their transfer applications.
Two- and four-year college leaders have to build better scaffolding that prioritizes transfer pathways. As much as we can improve our own efforts, we also rely on thoughtful education leaders and policymakers to address structural barriers that stand in the way of a smoother and more effective transfer process. That’s why I was so encouraged to see the latest Transfer Playbook from the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Columbia University Community College Research Center. The playbook detailed three main strategies: prioritizing transfer at the executive level, led by the president; aligning program pathways to create clear course sequences that lead to four-year degrees; and tailoring transfer advising with “a trained, knowledgeable, and caring advising corps.” This kind of compelling guidance to educational leaders is important for all of us because it sets forth exactly the strategies they can use to tackle the systemic problems at the root of what students encounter.
Social-emotional support is a vital companion to academic readiness. After my first stint at KEF, I spent five years working at Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation. I saw multiple examples at this community organization of how social workers paid close attention to the totality of young people’s needs. The result was remarkable turnarounds for troubled teenagers who began to gain a sense of belonging from more positive activities like lifeguarding. Our scholars have shown tremendous academic promise, but they’ve often shared similar personal challenges. One young man was steered away from gang life by a mentor at a settlement house that provides wraparound services. He was able to transfer from Hostos Community College to Yale, where he’s now a master’s student. That kind of journey led us to make social-emotional support a priority for KEF scholars - by bringing in students at Columbia University School of Social Work, for example, to work with our scholars on how to successfully navigate difficulties as they prepare to enter very different new worlds.

The multiple hats I’ve worn at Kaplan Educational Foundation and beyond have given me useful perspectives on the promise transfer holds for so many community college students. They’ve also reminded me of the hard work that remains to unlock its potential. With better coordination by a range of players across the education community, I’m excited about how much more we can accomplish in the years to come.

Start early - in high school - to build awareness of community college transfer opportunities. When I went to work for KEF for the first time, helping recruit new scholars just after graduating from Smith, I quickly discovered that many students we wanted to help with the practical details of transfer to selective four-year colleges just weren’t aware of impending deadlines and how work it would take to prepare for rigorous applications. That planted the seeds for one of our newest initiatives at KEF, the Community College Bridge Program. We and our community college partners in the CUNY system work directly with NYC public high schools to put transfer on the radar of promising students and help them plan ahead for an accessible and affordable path to a degree from a four-year college. Now, we will be able to reach 150 young people from underserved communities much sooner. A crucial three-year grant from the Ichigo Foundation will enable our Bridge Program to assist students in selecting the best community college environment, taking the appropriate courses needed for transfer, and choosing the most rewarding extracurricular activities and internships. All this will help ensure that these students have the best possible community college experience while positioning them for successful transfer to — and graduate from — a four-year institution.
Two and four-year schools must collaborate to ensure that transfer credits count - and to share that information with students. I’m closely following Transfer Explorer, a tool developed by the influential not-for-profit ITHAKA S+R. It directly tackles the core information challenge so many students face when they try to navigate the transfer process. It’s a public, national credit mobility website, currently in its beta release using data from institutions in four states. Every student who uses it can create a personal wallet of courses they have taken or plan to take. Then they can see which courses will be accepted for transfer credit and apply to degree requirements at schools that are members of Transfer Explorer. This approach builds on another very successful project that ITHAKA helped create, the CUNY Transfer Explorer, or T-Rex. In fact, it’s so promising that we’re creating a new Transfer Hub at KEF that’s designed to give community college students a personalized guide to make sure their credits count when they plan their transfer applications.
Two- and four-year college leaders have to build better scaffolding that prioritizes transfer pathways. As much as we can improve our own efforts, we also rely on thoughtful education leaders and policymakers to address structural barriers that stand in the way of a smoother and more effective transfer process. That’s why I was so encouraged to see the latest Transfer Playbook from the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Columbia University Community College Research Center. The playbook detailed three main strategies: prioritizing transfer at the executive level, led by the president; aligning program pathways to create clear course sequences that lead to four-year degrees; and tailoring transfer advising with “a trained, knowledgeable, and caring advising corps.” This kind of compelling guidance to educational leaders is important for all of us because it sets forth exactly the strategies they can use to tackle the systemic problems at the root of what students encounter.
Social-emotional support is a vital companion to academic readiness. After my first stint at KEF, I spent five years working at Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation. I saw multiple examples at this community organization of how social workers paid close attention to the totality of young people’s needs. The result was remarkable turnarounds for troubled teenagers who began to gain a sense of belonging from more positive activities like lifeguarding. Our scholars have shown tremendous academic promise, but they’ve often shared similar personal challenges. One young man was steered away from gang life by a mentor at a settlement house that provides wraparound services. He was able to transfer from Hostos Community College to Yale, where he’s now a master’s student. That kind of journey led us to make social-emotional support a priority for KEF scholars - by bringing in students at Columbia University School of Social Work, for example, to work with our scholars on how to successfully navigate difficulties as they prepare to enter very different new worlds.

Why Only 14% of Community College Students Earn BAs – And What We Can Do About It