Fight Ignorance, Exercising Caution!

Tags

BCCSP, Building Bridges, Community College Transfer Initiative, International Education, Internationalization, Transfer Students

I rarely eat at the campus cafeteria, it is a crowded place with many people that I would love to talk to for hours, hours that I cannot afford to spend in the cafeteria. However, on occasion, I do venture into this quicksand trap. Today was one such day. I was there with a purpose. Along with a few other volunteers, I was distributing free cake that boasted the International Education Week 2010 logo and telling students about the various events that would be taking place on campus as part of this week. When I was done with the promotional gig, I pulled up a chair next to some good friends. Half of them international students, and the other half transfer students from community colleges.

Community College Transfers and the Diversion Effect

Tags

Bridge Programs, Building Bridges, Community Colleges, Diversion Effect, Transfer Students

In a recently concluded study, Tatiana Melguizo and Alicia C. Dowd of the University of Southern California, have found that the significance of the ‘diversion effect’ had been previously overstated.

The findings further support the idea that community colleges are helping democratize education by expanding access to it for student from lower socioeconomic status and enabling them to achieve bachelor’s degrees at four-year institutions.

The study’s basic focus is to investigate the diversion effect, and it does not focus on the performance of community college transfer students at various institutions compared to students from a higher SES. The study analyzes data obtained from the National Education Longitudinal Study to support the claim that community colleges do not reduce the ability of students from comparable (lower) SES background to obtain a bachelor’s degree. There is not a significant difference between the performance of lower SES students who are transferring to four-year colleges from community colleges and those who are continuing their education at a four-year college.

Please tune back in as I will be posting information about other studies that build a strong case for creating bridge programs through which community college students can transfer to four-year colleges.