Community College Transfer and Baccalaureate Attainment.

By facilitating transfer to four-year institutions, community colleges have the potential to provide an important alternative pathway to the baccalaureate degree, especially for disadvantaged youth. However, questions remain about whether community college transfers are equally as likely to persist to the baccalaureate compared to their peers who initially enroll in four-year institutions. In this paper we compare the hazard of attrition from a four-year college among community college transfer students and initial four-year students. We use a discrete-time hazard model to control for term by term credit accumulation and compare the results of alternative approaches to controlling for selection into first college type. The results from this study demonstrate that any disadvantage in the odds of attrition from a four-year institution experienced by community college transfers is explained entirely by differences in enrollment intensity, academic achievement, and socioeconomic background—not by any institutional features of community colleges that inhibit educational attainment. Therefore, the community college appears to be an effective route to a bachelor's degree for students who transfer. The effect of community colleges on the attainment of students who fail to transfer, however, remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]