[GuidedPathways] Transfer Excellence: Strategies to Boost Bachelor’s Attainment

Thu Apr 3 13:40:19 PDT 2025

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An Opening Note

Since our founding, the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program has worked to identify colleges achieving strong levels of student success—and then to deeply investigate and broadly share how they did it. We began in 2010 with the creation of the $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, which ever since has been a core way we learn how excellent community colleges achieve unusually high levels of student success through scaled reforms. We have since expanded our research to include American Talent Initiative members achieving high and improving levels of access for low-income students, as well as partnerships between universities and community colleges that lead to strong bachelor’s attainment rates after transferring.

This month, I am delighted to announce the latest installment of that research—our new Transfer Playbook<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=0612f9057e&e=441c662533>, researched and written with the Community College Research Center. Nine years after research for our initial Transfer Playbook began, we’ve gone back into the field to find and investigate college partnerships that achieve great bachelor’s attainment results for all community college students, and also for particular groups that attain bachelor’s degrees at lower rates nationally. The student outcomes that these colleges prove possible are inspiring, and the transformational models they created offer replicable lessons about how others can dramatically increase bachelor’s attainment for the diverse students who enter community college every year.

Why do we do this research? Because college leaders, faculty, and staff can and want to do better. In response to this urge to improve, Aspen continues to expand programming for presidents, senior leaders, trustees, and college teams, creating opportunities for them to decide how to replicate lessons from excellent colleges to advance a bold reform agenda in their own contexts. For example, in partnership with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), we recently welcomed the fourth cohort of universities and community college partners into our Transfer Intensive<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=738092bd07&e=441c662533>, bringing to 91 the number of institutional teams that have participated.

Another example is our Unlocking Opportunity<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=2276dc51f7&e=441c662533> network, which is now accepting applications<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=558b340ddd&e=441c662533> for 50 more community colleges to join and improve workforce and transfer outcomes over an intensive, multi-year period; find application information below.

All of these efforts build on lessons we learned from excellent colleges, beginning with the first Aspen Prize cycle in 2011. Fast forward 14 years: we’ll celebrate our ten finalists and announce the winner(s) of the 2025 Aspen Prize next month on April 17, beginning at 12:30. We hope you will tune in to watch the ceremony; you can register for the livestream here<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=28527dee91&e=441c662533>. I look forward to seeing some of you at the event and appreciate all those who can join online.
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Best,
Josh Wyner
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Founder and Executive Director, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program

Transfer Playbook 2.0 Launch
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The 2024 Tracking Transfer Report from Aspen and CCRC found that nationally, only 16% of students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years of community college entry—far fewer than the 80% of entering community college students who report wanting to earn a bachelor’s. Our new Transfer Playbook offers concrete strategies that leaders, faculty, and staff at two and four-year colleges can use to close the gap between those student aspirations and bachelor’s attainment realities.

Based on quantitative research into college partnerships achieving the best results, our team interviewed dozens of colleges and conducted in-person site visits to institutions across the country. The result: synthesized practices and lessons from successful, replicable transfer models—from Arizona to Virginia—that other colleges and states can use to improve the bachelor’s attainment outcomes for students who start in community college. Consider Virginia Commonwealth University, which created new staff positions to lead transfer efforts and established a transfer center to provide advising for prospective transfer students at their community college partners. The leaders and transfer center have catalyzed institutional reforms that have significantly increased transfer success: VCU now has a 74 percent four-year graduation rate among community college transfer students.

The report details transformational models that we hope inspire every university and community colleges across the country, from the ADVANCE dual enrollment program at George Mason and Northern Virginia Community College, to the seamless transition program at Northern Arizona University and Arizona Western College, to the Justice Academy partnership between John Jay College of Criminal Justice and all of CUNY’s community colleges, and more. These models offer lessons that can be used by every institution in the country—all of which will be needed to activate the talents of the millions of deserving community college students who every year aim to transfer and earn life-changing bachelor’s degrees. To learn more, read our announcement<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=271c741236&e=441c662533> and access the free Transfer Playbook report here<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=9fd4f60945&e=441c662533>.

Register here<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=9727bc4f16&e=441c662533> for a webinar on May 7 at 3:00 pm: “Transfer Turnaround: Rebounding Enrollments and Recommendations From the Updated Transfer Playbook,” with panelists from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, CCRC, and Aspen.

Apply Now: 50 Community Colleges to Be Selected to Join the Expanded Unlocking Opportunity Network
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All of Aspen’s community college work includes a strong focus on ensuring students’ post-graduation success, whether that’s earning a credential that leads directly to a good job or successfully transferring and earning a bachelor’s degree. This is the driving force behind the Unlocking Opportunity<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=b4e171b8a5&e=441c662533> project—scaling proven strategies<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=614cad9242&e=441c662533> to help more students enter and complete high-value pathways.

Unlocking Opportunity began with 10 community colleges, and is now expanding to include 50 more. Each will set goals to increase the number of students in high-value programs and decrease the number in low-opportunity pathways, and develop strategies to achieve these goals. Our blog post<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=9d9dc9fc79&e=441c662533> with partner CCRC outlines the eight strategies being used by the original 10 colleges to increase opportunity for 28,000 students over a three year period. Apply now<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=6381de54d2&e=441c662533> to join the network and dig into the strategies with us; applications are open until May 5. This expansion has been made possible due to generous support from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

We will host a series of virtual information sessions this spring to share more about the network and application process. To join, please register using the links below:

  *   Unlocking Opportunity Tools & Resources

     *   April 11: 12 - 1:30pm ET | Register here<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=41ed90769d&e=441c662533>

  *   Lessons from Unlocking Opportunity Colleges

     *   April 30: 3 - 4:30pm ET | Register here<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=a891fb4131&e=441c662533>

Aspen Partners with Other Higher Education Organizations to Secure Important Federal Data
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Aspen recently joined 87 organizations and individual researchers in sending a letter<https://aspeninstitute.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ae2e56f1c283f8903c1a035e1&id=7b354cafdc&e=441c662533> to Congress elevating deep concerns regarding recent events that threaten to limit the capacity of the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to provide the data Aspen relies on to identify high-performing colleges, provide benchmarks to colleges, and evaluate the impact of national and state level college reforms. The letter urges Congress to utilize its legislative and oversight authority to protect IPEDS and other data sets that are used regularly by colleges.

Stay Connected with the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program
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