National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s Update on Transfer Students

 Complete report

First Look Fall 2020 Report Highlights

• Transfer enrollments are down 4.7 percent from last fall, declining somewhat more steeply than undergraduate enrollments generally (-4.5%).
• Each transfer pathway, however, responded differently. The number of reverse transfers fell much more (-18.4%), along with summer swirlers (-10.8%) and lateral transfers (-8.3%), while upward transfers unexpectedly increased by 2.6 percent.
• The growth in upward transfers this fall is led by continuing students, those who maintained enrollment since the COVID-19 outbreak. Most transferred without finishing an associate degree and these students are on the rise.
• A growing number of upward transfer students crossed state lines this fall.
• Students who had stopped out prior to the outbreak are less likely to have come back at all this fall, and less than half of those who came back transferred.
• This first look challenges recent predictions about the likely effects of the pandemic, such as an anticipated influx of four-year college students transferring into community colleges. There is also little evidence of an expected increase in the challenges facing students attempting upward transfers.