Thinking Through Transfer: Examining How Community College Students Make Transfer Decisions

Abstract

Objective: For many students, community college is a convenient first step toward a bachelor’s degree. Yet, although more than 80% of those who enroll in community colleges intend to transfer to a 4-year institution, fewer than 35% do so within 6 years. Quantitative data reveal the presence of a transfer gap and there is extensive research on college choice for high school students, but little qualitative research has been done to examine the transfer process for community college students to identify what drives their decisions. Method: In this article, we draw on interviews with 58 community college students in Texas to examine how they made transfer decisions. Results: We find that their decision-making and transfer pathways were complex and nonlinear in ways that were particular to the uncertainty of the community college context. For a subset of students, we identify minor hurdles that could derail their decision-making, lengthen their timelines to transfer, or lead to a failure to transfer. Contribution: By illuminating student pathways to transfer using qualitative research, our work identifies potential areas where policy and practice could strengthen transfer to improve student outcomes.

Keywords

college choice decision-making community college transfer qualitative methods

For many students, particularly low-income students and students of color, community college is an affordable, convenient first step toward a bachelor’s degree. Forty-four percent of African American undergraduates and 56% of Latinx undergraduates attend community colleges (Ma & Baum, 2016), which accounts for 42% of first-time freshmen enrollment in the United States. Yet, although more than 80% of those who enroll in community colleges intend to transfer to 4-year institutions, fewer than 35% do so within 6 years (Jenkins & Fink, 2016). Quantitative data reveal the presence of a transfer gap, but researchers and policy makers lack an understanding of how community college students select transfer institutions.

There is extensive research on college choice and matriculation for high school students entering baccalaureate-granting institutions (Black et al., 2015; Hossler & Gallagher, 1987; Long, 2004; McDonough, 1997; Perna, 2006; Radford, 2013; M. L. Tierney, 1983). Researchers have also examined students’ decisions about whether or not to attend community colleges (Bers & Galowich, 2002; Somers et al., 2006), as well as conditions, barriers, and supports in their progression within community colleges (Crisp & Nuñez, 2014; Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2003; Gandara et al., 2012; Lee & Frank, 1990; Scott-Clayton, 2015; Wassmer et al., 2004); In addition, researchers have also examined post-transfer experiences and outcomes (Belfield & Bailey, 2011; Castro & Cortez, 2017; Doyle, 2009; Grubb, 1991; Lee et al., 1993; Leigh & Gill, 2003; Long & Kurlaender, 2009; Melguizo & Dowd, 2009). However, little research has examined how community college students decide where to apply or make their choices of 4-year institutions. A few quantitative studies have examined the quality or characteristics of students’ transfer destinations (Backes & Velez, 2014; Hilmer, 1997), and one qualitative study has examined the experiences of transfer students who successfully enrolled at 4-year institutions (Tobolowsky & Bers, 2019). No studies to date have used qualitative methods to exclusively examine the experiences of students intending to transfer to 4-year schools from 2-year schools, while they are still enrolled in community colleges.

To examine transfer decision-making, we draw on longitudinal interviews with 58 community college students in Texas who were in the midst of making transfer decisions, tracing the progression of their choice sets over 2 years. Specifically, we ask, What is the sequential choice process for a sample of community college students seeking to transfer to 4-year institutions in Texas? To capture the community college student’s transfer experience, we examine the experiences of our participants and the extent to which they fit existing models of college choice, from models that focus on traditional students choosing college during high school to those that call into question the notion of choice in higher education altogether. We argue that traditional models of college choice are not sufficient to explain the decisions of community college transfer students, who face myriad timelines and hurdles in the process. Our findings illuminate new dimensions of the college-choice process for this population of students and indicate potential areas where policy makers could intervene to boost transfer rates and smooth the transfer process for this group of students.

Background

Hossler and Gallagher’s (1987) three-phase model is the foundational piece in the area of college choice. Their work focused on the choice process of high school students as they established their predisposition to attend college, based on their individual and institutional contexts, as they moved through their search for the ideal college by gathering information and when they then arrived at a choice, concluding a linear journey that involved winnowing down from a large pool of options to arrive at a selected destination.

Researchers have since extended Hossler and Gallagher’s (1987) model of college choice by illuminating the complex pathways from high school to matriculation in postsecondary education. The process involves several decision makers (students, their parents, and admissions officers) and multiple decision points along the way: the decision to apply, the admissions decision, and whether students choose to enroll (Radford, 2013). Critiques of Hossler and Gallagher’s work, however, have shown that their model may not apply to marginalized student populations. For example, economic drivers for degree attainment may influence African American students differently because these students may not see evidence that a college degree will yield a higher paying job (Freeman, 1997, 1999; St. John, 1991). Perna (2006) advanced a model of college choice that placed economic calculations at the forefront (students weigh the costs of attendance against possible economic gains), while also factoring in students’ personal contexts, institutional contexts, and the broader policy landscape.

These revised models have also challenged the idea that college choice is a sequential process by demonstrating that students can repeat stages as needed (Acevedo-Gil, 2017; Radford, 2013); college-going decisions are complex and dynamic processes, involving cultural processes and meaning making (Gildersleeve, 2010). Recognition that students’ college decision-making processes are not linear or rational, as earlier theorized, has generated calls for “cultural-ecological frameworks” for college choice and decision-making (Cox, 2016; Iloh, 2018; W. G. Tierney & Venegas, 2009). These frameworks hold that choice is not a one-time decision (Cox, 2016; Iloh, 2018), and once the door is opened to higher education, students have the opportunity to transfer constantly. In light of this theoretical provocation, in this study, we examine the way that students’ options for potential transfer destinations—their choice sets (Bell, 2009)—either remain the same or change over a 2-year period. Students sometimes enroll in a 2-year institution without the intention to transfer and experience a warming up effect as they receive encouragement from faculty and realize their own potential to succeed in higher education (Deil-Amen, 2006). Other students aspire to a baccalaureate degree and are deterred from their journey by complicating conditions (Cox, 2016): structural barriers both within and beyond the institution (e.g., housing mobility, family obligations, and financial challenges). Despite the ways in which their lives bump up against the requirements of an institution, their aspirations to transfer and obtain a bachelor’s degree may “hold steady” even if they have not taken specific steps to progress toward transfer (Deterding, 2015; Nielsen, 2015).

Iloh (2018) has advanced a model of “college-going decisions and trajectories,” a cultural-ecological framework that eschews the word choice completely. She argues that this term obscures the privilege of being able to “choose” freely from a menu of options and that using the word choice suggests a singular event. Iloh calls for a balanced consideration of student opportunity, access to information, and fluidity of time when examining college-going trajectories, advancing a nonlinear, iterative model in which students’ lack of information at any particular point reveals a system failure rather than an individual deficit.

These critiques of the traditional college choice model point out that, particularly for low-income or first-generation marginalized students, “more information” may not be sufficient; students face structural challenges or “complicating conditions” that can impede their college-going efforts (Cox, 2016). Choices of colleges are thus situated within “social, cultural, and organizational contexts” (McDonough, 1997, p. 9). However, this research focuses primarily on high school students navigating the college process. Somers et al. (2006) developed a model of community college choice although this model focuses only on the choice to attend a 2-year college and does not consider the transfer student’s journey. Tobolowsky and Bers (2019) have examined the experiences of both horizontal and vertical transfer students (those moving from 2-year to 4-year schools and those moving between 4-year institutions) and found heterogeneity in the ways that students approached transfer, with some carefully considering options, whereas others haphazardly made choices about coursework and schools. They spoke with “traditional students,” post-transfer. Our study builds on the work of all of these scholars, but examines the experiences of community college transfer-intending students exclusively—including those who have successfully transferred and those who have not—and answers Cox’s (2016) call for longitudinal, qualitative “studies that follow students’ postsecondary paths and attend to the specific contexts and conditions that shape students’ multiple college-related decision-making moments along those paths” (p. 24).

To understand the context of students’ choices, we also draw on research in psychology and economics on decision-making. Navigating community colleges can be challenging, given the numerous pathways, majors, and courses, with differences in whether courses transfer or are applied to a major (Scott-Clayton, 2015). Studies of high school students’ decision-making have identified the important role of the default option, or status quo bias, in explaining why students do not end up in college (Avery & Kane, 2004). Students do not often choose against college, but simply do not end up going to college because of a series of small missteps or minor hurdles, such as missing the SAT or a required course, which disrupts their plans (Avery & Kane, 2004; Cabrera & La Nasa, 2000; Horn, 1997; Klasik, 2012). Navigating this process may be more difficult for low-income or first-generation students for whom college may not be the default option. Decisions made by the poor are more difficult than those made by more affluent people, not because of a difference in decision-making biases, capacity, values, or culture, but because poverty has narrower margins for error (Bertrand et al., 2004). Small bureaucratic “hassles” can also prevent people in need from taking up programs such as food stamps or financial support (Bertrand et al., 2004). Similarly, the small hassles of applying for aid or completing applications may prevent students, particularly low-income and first-generation students, from transferring (Scott-Clayton, 2015).

The complexity and quantity of available information can also be a deterrent to transfer. Students need more than just information; they need to be able to interpret information, for which they need guidance to make optimal decisions within the institutional context (Bettinger et al., 2009; Castleman et al., 2015; Deil-Amen & Rosenbaum, 2003; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006). Having too many options can result in choice avoidance (Beshears et al., 2013; Iyengar et al., 2003). Or, when too many choices are present, idiosyncratic factors, such as whether a friend is enrolling in a particular course or program, can significantly influence students’ decisions (Miller & Goldrick-Rab, 2015; Scott-Clayton, 2015; M. L. Tierney, 1983). It is therefore important to understand how students navigate and interpret the large amount of information on college choices that is available.

Students may not consider all choices simultaneously. By narrowly bracketing their options (Rabin & Weizsacker, 2009; Read et al., 1999), students may make less than optimal decisions. For example, students might evaluate two simple decisions separately rather than together, which can yield outcomes different from those obtained with joint evaluation or “broad” bracketing (Hossain & Morgan, 2006). Broad bracketing often leads to better decisions because it “allows people to take into account all the consequences of their actions” (Read et al., 1999, p. 171); however, it is also more difficult to consider all options bundled together because it might be easier to deal with decisions in smaller sets or one at a time. For example, community college students may receive advice or make decisions about specific courses rather than their overall goals (Scott-Clayton, 2015), or evaluate transfer destinations within categories (e.g., public, private) rather than consider all of them simultaneously.

College decisions are thus nonlinear and complex, shaped by social contexts. Community college students in particular may face especially complex decisions, involving factors such as the timing of transfer, cost, credit transferability, or the need to balance career, education, and family. We take the opportunity, in this study, to engage with multiple models of college choice, from the seminal contribution of Hossler and Gallagher, which motivated our original inquiry, to the sociologically situated critiques and revisions that have arisen in recent years, to inform policy and practice that can serve the interests of the growing number of transfer-intending community college students.

Texas Community College Policies

In Texas, there are 50 community colleges, within a highly decentralized system that grants much agency to individual institutions to create transfer policies and partnerships (Texas Association of Community Colleges, 2018). The majority of community college students in Texas intend to transfer and to earn bachelor’s degrees, yet only about a third do so (Bailey et al., 2017). Community college students have the option to transfer to most Texas 4-year institutions whenever they want, save for a few institutions that require a minimum number of accumulated transfer credit hours.

Students in Texas may encounter several barriers along the transfer pipeline. Community colleges, 4-year schools, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) have created several policies to facilitate easy transfer between institutions, yet it is unclear whether these policies actually help students progress. The policies typically aid students in transferring credit between institutions, but do not necessarily specify how that credit will apply toward students’ bachelor’s degrees post transfer (Bailey et al., 2017). This means that community college students often enroll in courses that their degree programs do not require, commonly resulting in wasted time and money.

Articulation agreements are additional means designed to facilitate easier transfer. As of fall 2017, there were more than 1,400 institution-to-institution articulation agreements across Texas (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board [THECB], 2017), but there are none statewide. Students and advisors alike often encounter difficulties in attempting to interpret these agreements’ requirements (Bailey et al., 2017), and the agreements also require maintenance, which many institutions cannot achieve. In addition, students seeking to apply to transfer to multiple institutions may be faced with several different requirements due to vast differences across articulation agreements (Bailey et al., 2017).

Data and Method

Sample

For this case study (cf. Yin, 2003), we selected two public community college systems located within the same geographic region in Central Texas. Our goal was to find systems that were similar in terms of geographic distance and higher educational opportunity but had institutional variation (M. L. Tierney, 1983) to see how they shaped students’ decision-making processes (Shaw & London, 2001). We explored patterns and themes that might hold across the two different systems, as well as ways in which they might differ.

Community College A served 41,574 students on 11 campuses in the fall of 2015, the first semester of primary data collection. Nearly four fifths of students (78.28%) attended classes part-time. White students made up 44% of the student body, Latinx students 32%, Black students nearly 7%, and Asian students 4.3%. Two thirds of students (66.29%) were below the age of 25 years. Our sample for Community College B included students from two campuses, serving 31,857 students, which are a part of a larger network of schools in the metropolitan area. Students from historically underrepresented groups made up about two thirds of the student body, a larger share than in Community College A. At Community College B, like Community College A, approximately two thirds of all students were below the age of 25 years. Within each system, students can, and often do, take courses at multiple campuses within the system, depending on their major, course availability, and distance to home or work.

In fall 2015, we targeted students who were already “predisposed” (Hossler & Gallagher, 1987) to make a choice—those who responded to a call for participants who intended to transfer to a 4-year institution within the next 12 months. We were intentional about recruiting students who self-identified as nearly transfer-ready (within the next 12 months) because we were interested in the “search stage” of their decision-making, when they obtain information and judge options in their choice sets. At each community college, we emailed students using listservs, limiting the distribution to students who had indicated that they intended to transfer within the next 12 months. We set up tables to contact students twice a week for 2 months, handing out flyers and sign-up sheets. We were able to recruit 104 participants in the first year. It should be noted that while it was the first year of our study, students with whom we spoke were at different stages in their higher education journeys. We met with recent high school graduates in their first semester of higher education, with returning students who had been at this or other community colleges for years, and with students who were preparing to apply for imminent transfer. We sought to follow up with all students in the second year, but only 58 responded to those requests.¹ Of those students, 26 were in their first year of community college, 15 were in their second, six were in their third, three were in their fourth, four were in their fifth, and four were in their sixth. Because our goal was to examine the process of transfer over time, here we focus on the subset of students with whom we held two interviews across 2 years (see Table 1 for our sample).

Table 1.

Description of Sample.

Demographic Information	Categories	Number of participants
Gender	Male	16
Gender	Female	42
First generation	Yes	38
First generation	No	20
Underrepresented minority	Yes	46
Underrepresented minority	No	12
Traditional students (below 25 years of age)	Yes	36
Traditional students (below 25 years of age)	No	22
Campus	Community College A	32
Campus	Community College B	26
Years enrolled at community college	<1	1
	1–2	40
	3–4	9
	5+	8

Note. We define students as “first generation” if neither parent had a bachelor’s degree. Underrepresented minorities are students who identified as Black, Latino, or Native American. Traditional students are those who attended college within 2 years of graduating from high school. Data are from the first year of the study, 2015.

Data Collection

Interviews

We conducted two interviews—one in the fall of 2015 and one in the fall of 2016—with 58 community college students across two community college systems about the 4-year universities in their choice sets to learn about their decision-making process and what heuristics they used. Interviews were semi-structured (Patton, 1990), lasting about 60 minutes each, and all were recorded and transcribed. We asked these participants about the schools they were choosing, how their choices changed from one year to the next, and about the reasons why they added or rejected choices (Ball et al., 2002). Toward the end of each interview, the students completed a short online survey, using Qualtrics, which took 10 to 20 minutes to complete. The students were asked to indicate the 4-year universities they had heard of, were considering, or had applied to from an initial start list of schools in Texas, to which they could add.

Data Analysis

Qualitative coding

First, we coded the data with the qualitative software program, Dedoose, using a hybrid coding method (Miles et al., 2014): We began by developing deductive codes from the literature on college choice (e.g., “transfer-choice-why,” to indicate reasons for selecting a particular institution), along with specific subcategories (e.g., academics, geographic location, and cost). While coding, we defined boundaries between subcategories through a constant-comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), modifying and omitting deductive codes as necessary, and replacing or expanding on them.

Next, we created detailed memos for each student, five to seven pages long. These memos, which captured data from the two interview transcripts, surveys, and our field notes, focused on the student’s background and predisposition to transfer, search process and choice set, and how the choice set changed from Year 1 to Year 2 of the study.

Choice sets

We operationalized each student’s choice set by including any 4-year institution that the student reported as one that they were considering or had applied to (Bell, 2009; Flint, 1992; M. L. Tierney, 1983). We considered each student’s “choice set” as it was on the day of the interview. We recognize that students could have and likely did consider other schools before this day, but we chose to limit their choice sets to the options they were currently considering when we spoke with them. We thus obtained a choice set for each student in Year 1 and a second one in Year 2, triangulating the interview and survey data. We then examined changes in those choice sets and the key drivers for those changes in the memos.

Matrices

We created qualitative matrices (Miles et al., 2014) to address the study’s central questions about students’ decision-making about higher education. The matrix for each student captured the student’s choice set in each year, the number of application rounds conducted and to which colleges, the student’s conception of the higher education landscape, and evidence of setbacks in the student’s decision-making. To aid validity, our coders worked in teams of two to independently classify each student into these categories and codes, along with relevant quotes and evidence, and then met to discuss and achieve consensus. We then examined the matrices, reviewing data in the columns, and wrote analytic memos about patterns and themes (e.g., setbacks, changes in choice set, and number of application cycles) within and across these categories to extract major findings.

Findings

By tracing students’ stages through the transfer process, we found that many students’ paths toward reaching their transfer destinations were not linear or sequential, in ways that were particular to the community college context. Although the process of “transfer” is, like older models of college choice, typically conceived of as a one-time process, we found that students went through multiple rounds of applications and decision-making, resulting in greater application costs, time, effort, and, sometimes, exhaustion with the process overall. Some students followed the theorized decision-making process, narrowing their options over time due to factors such as geography and cost, and became more informed about their transfer decisions. But many moved forward and backward through the search and choice set stages, narrowed their options very quickly, or expanded them in ways that were ultimately unhelpful or overwhelming, aligning more with recent theorizations of higher education journeys. Some students experienced catastrophic disturbances (Scheffer & Carpenter, 2003); seemingly minor hurdles in the process (e.g., missing a deadline) led them to restart the college-choice process or question the entire endeavor.

The Community College’s Role in Shaping the Search Process

Students encountered a variety of locale-specific services and other forms of information during the transfer process. Regarding transfer-specific initiatives, Community College B hosts a Transfer Center on campus, and Community College A provides students with a Transfer Academy program. Some students cited these as helpful, but they were not always well attended and were sometimes difficult to locate. At some events, campus representatives would share information and marketing materials with students, often trying to recruit them to universities that were less well-known or managing their expectations if they were applying to flagship universities. Students at both campuses also attended transfer fairs, where they met admissions representatives from 4-year universities. Sometimes, students encountered schools at these fairs, which they had not previously considered, adding them to their choice sets. Other students discovered information about academic programs during transfer fairs that led them to consider whether to apply to specific schools. For example, one first-generation minority student at Community College B ran into an admissions representative from a local university in the hallway; this conversation led the student to consider transferring to a 4-year school more seriously than he had before then. A first-generation student who identified as Black and Latina from Community College A who had not yet transferred shared that her campus offered continued support in pursuing transfer: “Different universities come to [Community College A]. They hold open houses, and transfer events. [Community College A] is really good about, they want their students to get a bachelor’s degree.” Another student, a first-generation Latina from Community College B, commented,

[The transfer fair] put it in visual perspective for me, it was pretty much the same thing the lady told me over the phone, but they actually provided me with the plan, instead of me seeing it on the Internet . . . and then she also gave me her business card as well.

She noted that the information was the same as what she could receive online, but the personal contact and the individualized attention felt different and special.

Overwhelmingly, academic advisors and counselors at community colleges both helped and hindered students’ progress. Students were often confused by the advising process and met with multiple advisors. According to one student, a first-generation, underrepresented minority student,

Well, I tried to get a schedule, an appointment with [my advisor], but that doesn’t really happen a lot of times. If she’s not available, they’ll give me someone else. When I get someone else, they kind of help me. The one that I have is very helpful, but when she’s not available, I don’t really get the information I need.

Therefore, this student navigated the decision-making process with information from other sources and often did not have input from an adviser when constructing her choice set. One student of color said that she did not even go to the counselors at her community college because their knowledge did not extend beyond schools in Texas; this did not help her, because she wanted to transfer to an out-of-state school: “Usually counselors [at Community College A] only know about places in Texas. Because a lot of my places are out of Texas . . . You’re better off calling the colleges yourself.” In these ways, community college staff, and their knowledge or lack of knowledge about particular institutions, can shape students’ decision-making and trajectory.

Some students also noted that advisors might have intentionally encouraged them to undermatch to schools that they did not want to attend. One student, a first-generation student of color, said that she did not get much help from staff at Community College B about applying to competitive schools and instead sought out a mentor outside of school. Another first-generation student of color said that he felt as though he received inadequate support from his advisors at Community College A, and that they were steering him away from selective institutions, such as the state flagship universities. It is uncertain, based on our data, whether advisers are encouraging “undermatching” due to the large volume of students seeking to apply to flagship institutions, helping students to find institutions that are the best fit based on their academic preparation and chances of admission, or whether there are other forces at play that impact advisors’ interactions with students. Advisers sometimes pushed students to add schools to their choice sets to have a “backup plan,” which was also emphasized at transfer events.

Some specific initiatives at the community colleges provided students with additional access to information that ultimately influenced students’ choice sets. Students cited faculty members in the Honors College at Community College B as helpful sources of information, several of whom discussed specific 4-year schools and programs with the students. Many of the students in the Honors program noted that they inquired into schools that they discussed with their professors. However, although some students found support in the Honors College, others encountered sources that left them searching for additional information. For students who were eligible for benefits, staff at Veterans Affairs (VA) offices often served as advisors for students at both Community Colleges A and B, providing students with guidance about degree plans and transfer institutions. But in some cases, the VA was not a useful resource. One first-generation and minority student noted,

I also talk with the VA, too. The VA at Community College A isn’t as helpful as I want it to be. I am hoping maybe when I go to San Antonio, since there is a military base right there, they will be able to help me a little more.

This student’s response indicates that students consider context when seeking information. He believed that he could find more beneficial advising at a school that served more military students.

Students also sought advice from staff at 4-year schools. The interactions that students had with these staff shaped their perceptions of the institution. For example, one first-generation Latino student found support in a Latino male mentoring initiative based at 4-year universities in Central Texas. He said that becoming involved in this program motivated him to stay in school and continue the transfer process so that he could pursue a bachelor’s degree. Several other students utilized advisors and/or admissions staff at 4-year schools that they were considering for support. These staff members shared advice about the application process and answered questions about students’ prospective majors. In this way, students who had formulated a choice set bypassed the “middle man,” often seeking information directly from their desired institutions to strengthen their chances of admission. However, for some students, these interactions were negative experiences; this ultimately led some students to not consider applying to that school. The interactions that prospective students have with staff is significant because students use these as indicators of whether they will feel supported or welcomed on campus. The institution itself may not be a bad fit for students, but students do consider the interactions that they have with staff during the transfer process as they consider whether to apply.

Multiple Rounds of Decision-Making

Many of our students (26 out of 58) had applied and been accepted to a 4-year university even before coming to a community college, and 15 of these students ultimately applied two or more times to 4-year institutions, being accepted or matriculating into one. Sometimes this was due to students’ swirling between institutions (Schudde & Goldrick-Rab, 2015), moving from 4-year to 2-year institutions; at other times, it was because they were applying only to a limited subset of schools each year, rather than to all at once.

Unlike high school students, community college students have an unconstrained time window for making college decisions; they can transfer after earning just a few credits, or wait longer to transfer in as a junior. This results in an extended decision-making period and an extended search, and it can lead to multiple rounds of applications. For example, one student was not sure of her timeline for transfer. As she noted,

Since tuition is lower over here [at the community college], and I’ll be able to have the daycare, I might stay here and finish some of those basic classes I need to take instead of going over [to the University of Texas at San Antonio] and taking them. I don’t know. [The community college] is kind of a smaller campus, like the classrooms are smaller, too. I can have more one-on-one time with the teacher if I need help.

Like this student, many others noted that they were fearful of large class sizes or less supportive environments at 4-year universities, which may have driven them to maximize their time at the community college and delay their transfer decisions for another year.

Students might, in Year 1, apply to their top destination—a state flagship, for example—and then, if they are not admitted, apply to two or more schools the following year. This type of narrow bracketing of each decision may not be optimal. Students would likely be better served by considering all options simultaneously, including having a backup option in the year when they applied to a highly selective school. One student, determined to go to the state flagship university because of its excellent program in her major of interest, began the application process in her first year at community college. However, due to some technical difficulties, she was not able to submit her application, and she decided to apply to additional schools in the next year. When she expanded her choice set, she lost some of her certainty about transferring and about how her credits would transfer to a 4-year institution as this would be different for different institutions. Similarly, another student applied only to the state flagship in Year 1 and planned to apply there again in the second year and possibly to other institutions. As she prioritized universities, her choice set shrank and, although she may have considered other universities as backups, she ultimately applied to only one school and was not accepted. This meant that she had to make another choice in the following year about which institutions to apply to, which drew out the process. In her case, she was accumulating too many credits, and she needed to transfer soon. Such delays or protracted decisions and applications over multiple years can have real consequences for students’ credit accumulation and time to degree, with opportunity costs and forgone earnings.

High school structures ensure that the application process is not iterative or repetitive. Counselors may encourage students to apply to several schools and students can have their SAT scores sent to multiple schools for free. All of this occurs within a short period before high school students graduate. When students begin community college, however, their timeline may be more uncertain. Students must seek out resources on their own to guide them in the application process. Given the complexity of transfer decisions, students may avoid choices, putting off complex decisions because they want to “do them right,” but this can cause delays that are harmful in the long run (Beshears et al., 2013; Iyengar et al., 2003). For example, one student, busy with work and family obligations, put the decision regarding transfer destinations on hold to focus on her current obligations, including completing a certificate program at the community college. When asked about her current choice set in Year 2, she said, “Right now, I’m not even thinking about it. I just want to pass this class.” However, such a delay may have been problematic for her ability to transfer, due to deadlines, required course sequences, and so on. Overwhelmed with her current work, she postponed her decision about her transfer destination although she might have benefited from beginning the search and information process earlier.

Students’ timelines varied based on their social resources, career stage, and access to information. Two students whom we interviewed, sisters, attended community college for just one semester. They had learned that this could be a “backdoor” path to the state flagship, The University of Texas at Austin, particularly for students who were not in the top 6% of their high school class, and that it guaranteed admission to a state flagship. Other students also sought to transfer as soon as possible to a 4-year university, rather than earn their associate’s degree first, taking just the minimum number of credits prior to transfer. Some students, however, sought an associate’s degree before transferring to mark an accomplishment and milestone, save money, or receive some concrete benefit from it such as a raise at work. The varied needs of transfer-intending community college students cannot be met through a single intervention.

Community college students may have a more fluid timeline for applying and searching for transfer destinations because many of them are older, with more responsibilities; “life is happening” to them throughout the transfer process. While navigating transfer decision-making, they have other simultaneous goals—not just transfer to a 4-year institution and completion of a BA, but also advancement in their current jobs by earning certificates. This was particularly true for older students who often pursued a BA to advance in their careers. Sometimes these goals can cause conflict, because the courses required for a certificate may slow a student’s progression to the BA. One student, for example, wanted both a certificate and a path to transfer, and the decisions that she had to make, which were not mutually independent, influenced her trajectory. The student was making seemingly rational decisions about transfer institutions, weighing factors such as where she could get in and considering the cost, distance, and compatibility of programs or courses of study with her career. However, by her second year, she was no longer enrolled in community college because she was working on a certificate for her work and did not think that she could do both because the exam was costly and she did not want to have to retake it. Transferring was still on her mind, but when she would be able to take steps to transfer and resume decision-making regarding transfer institutions had become unclear.

Similarly, post-traditional students (Soares, 2013), that is, students who are 25 years old or older or who are aged below 25 years but have “adult” responsibilities such as full-time employment, independent financial status, childcare, or nontraditional educational trajectory, may consider other options besides school. One first-generation college goer was considering the military alongside transfer to a 4-year school. His “college choice set” in Year 1 contained only one school, and he was also weighing noncollege options simultaneously. His decision-making was therefore more complex because he had to compare not just one institution with one another, but the relative costs and benefits of joining the military as an alternative versus currently completing his BA. Students at community colleges are more likely to be working and supporting others, so their timelines may be more fluid when the goal of transfer is pitted against other goals related to their careers and their ability to support their families.

The Transfer Meander: Tracing Changes in Students’ Choices

For many students in our sample, the path toward reaching their transfer destination was neither linear nor sequential. Whereas several students followed the theorized decision-making process, narrowing their options over time due to factors such as geography and cost as they became more informed and precise in their transfer decisions, many moved forward and backward through stages of the search and choice set formation process, narrowed their options too quickly, or expanded them in ways that were unhelpful or overwhelming.

Some students did not alter their choice sets over the 2 years of the study (17 out of 58). In some cases, this was because students had already determined their choice sets and considered their options before we spoke with them in the first year. In this group, we spoke with a student who faced the complicating condition (Cox, 2016) created by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status—limited access to both state and federal financial aid—and who was constrained by his desire to stay close to his family. He had selected three schools of varying quality that met his criteria; by Year 2, he had enrolled in a private institution that offered him funding.

Many students shifted their choice sets and decisions over the 2 years. Several students (13 of 58) expanded their choice sets between Years 1 and 2. Some of these students had previously considered only one institution but came to believe that focusing on just one school was, in the words of one, not a “rational” choice. A student whose first choice was the local branch of the state flagship shared in her Year 2 interview, “In case that doesn’t work out . . . I think about having a backup plan.” Other students broadened their choice sets, but in ways that seemed haphazard or without additional information. One had been admitted to a program that suited her, but while she saved up for the move, she explored a few other schools—none of which represented a better option academically. She noted that these other schools did not offer a streamlined graduation timeline and that they were just “too big.” Some students added schools that did not reflect their desired criteria or that just served to pad their already large choice sets. One student added only highly selective institutions (one state flagship, one Ivy League university, and one highly selective West Coast university), despite having grades of “mostly Bs.” In this sense, expanding a choice set and searching for more options is not necessarily a positive thing, particularly without good information on one’s chances of admission or the courses of study offered, and it may in fact derail a student from the transfer goal. Therefore, having more options is not necessarily better for students’ decision-making.

Many students (25 out of 58) narrowed their options over the time period. Many followed the theorized path of decision-making, narrowing their options from a longer list as a result of further research, tailoring their sets to match their needs and eschewing less appropriate options. In some cases, however, students tightened their choice sets based on narrow bracketing, such as focusing on just one feature. Nine students, for example, eliminated all private institutions because of sticker shock—the surprise students’ experienced after learning of the high tuition costs associated with attending a private institution—without obtaining information on potential scholarships or grants. Some narrowed their choices so much that they ended up with a single institution, often believing that the school they selected represented their only choice. One student’s choice set narrowed in size, but she added a few new schools, including some that did not have the nursing program she desired or that were located farther away beyond the geographic radius she had said was important for her. In other words, this student, a first-generation student, may not have had the information she needed, or a sufficient depth of information, to make the choices she wanted to make. As she noted, when asked about the challenges she faced with transferring,

Basically, like applying. I know all the information is on the website, but it’s still confusing to me. I know I can send an email to the school, to one of the people. It’s just applying and just . . . I haven’t done it yet, so it’s still kind of confusing to me.

A lack of information on her top choice, a dual program between two public institutions in San Antonio, particularly in terms of how to navigate the application process (such as which institution to apply to), drove her to add other universities to her choice set, but these conflicted with her broader goals for education.

We also found that students moved back and forth between search and choice set formation stages. Students might start with several schools in their choice set, then narrow their set very quickly to just one or two options, and then expand it again in a later year. For example, one student did not seem to distinguish between the “search” and “choice set” stages, but rather weaved back and forth from one to the other. She started with a larger choice set, then zoomed to just one option, a local public university, but then considered two more universities, one private and one public the following year, before ultimately narrowing back to the initial one in her choice set from the first year. Similarly, another student, rather than go through an extensive choice process, simply followed a degree plan for a university encouraged by her adviser:

I’m telling you where I’m going to go, but I have not done any research about it. I think I really need to sit back and do my research to make sure that [university] is going to be the best fit for me.

She hoped to explore other options or confirm that this transfer destination was the right one for her as she pursued her degree. However, the more she accumulated credits for one degree plan, the harder it might be to switch. Her strategy was to “lock something in” so that she would not have to worry about making a choice and could start following a degree plan, but she still wanted the flexibility of the search and choice process. Other students sought to “lock in” a university, but when they were not admitted, they became open to more choices, going back through the search stage to identify other options. Such delays or protracted decisions and applications over multiple years can have real consequences for students’ credit accumulation and time to degree, with opportunity costs and forgone earnings.

Some students, while seeming to follow a rational process in constructing their choice sets, ended up narrowing the choice sets quickly to institutions that were not necessarily ideal, given their expressed major or program of interest. One student, for example, expanded her choice set to include only highly selective institutions (The University of Texas at Austin, one Ivy League university, and one highly selective West Coast university) despite having grades of “mostly Bs.” In this sense, expanding a choice set and searching for more options is not necessarily positive, particularly without good information on the chances of admission or courses of study offered.

Many students thus started on an apparently linear path, considering several universities in Year 1, but by Year 2, they narrowed their choice sets very quickly to just one university, often a selective flagship university, rather than applying to a set of schools. For some students, this might lead to successful transfer but, in other cases, students were then rejected and had to restart the application process. For some students, narrowing quickly or keeping a limited set of options was a strategy to counteract the “paradox of choice”—the idea that too many options can make choices overwhelming. One student, for example, was accepted to a selective private university in Texas, while still enrolled at community college, through a partnership between the two institutions. She was initially very excited about attending this school and she was guaranteed admission as long as she met minimum GPA requirements. However, rather than transfer right away, through the suggestions of colleagues, family, and professors, she began adding other schools to her choice set, which slowed her transfer timeline. She added several highly selective out-of-state schools to her choice set and applied to them, but she was ultimately not accepted to any although she was waitlisted at one highly selective university. In Year 2, she noted that having too many options slowed her down:

I’m just very tunnel-vision with that kind of stuff. If I open my mind too much, then I’m going to be like, “Oh, I can go here. I can go here.” And then I’ll be in that big loophole again, and I don’t want that.

By “again,” she referred to her experience in the previous year, and she sought to limit her options in Year 2 to stay focused on her goal. She now considered a smaller set of options, including the private university she had been admitted to, as well as a less selective public university located closer to home. Similarly, other students noted that they just “wanted to stick with something,” sometimes to eliminate options and the associated stress of having to make a decision among multiple schools, and so they quickly picked a local, accessible option, rather than investigate or search for other alternatives. Other students either deliberately avoided searching too much online about options for transfer to avoid going “down the rabbit hole,” or had heard about other universities but did not consider them to “keep my choices at a minimum.” As another student similarly noted, “Right now I’ve kind of made up my mind about the colleges I want to apply to. I don’t want to have too many options and then mix everything up.” Indeed, when consumers have too many options, there may be greater anxiety or doubt about the decision (Schwartz, 2004), particularly in making high-stakes decisions such as those relating to education. Students may thus be limiting their choices as a way to cope with the stress and anxiety of decision-making.

Students who “kept their options open” and had very large choice sets sometimes seemed to be stuck in the search stage. One student who was very focused on the search stage kept a list of 40 schools, in-state and out-of-state, that she was considering. From this, she specifically focused on a smaller set of schools, which she discussed with us in the interview (approximately 13 schools). Between Years 1 and 2, her list of schools grew. As she did not “bother” to go to her counselors at the community college, “just do[ing] it myself,” she may have become overwhelmed with options, many of which were not feasible for her.

Catastrophic Disturbances

For some community college students, seemingly minor hurdles (e.g., failure to pass an exam, missing a deadline, or receiving a rejection) did not simply cause them to reapply or retry during the next cycle, but could cause them to restart the entire college-choice process or question the entire endeavor. One first-generation student who attempted to apply to The University of Texas at Austin in Year 1 ran into issues with the application itself and, due to technical difficulties, was not able to submit it and decided to apply the next year to additional schools. When she expanded her choice set, she became less certain about transferring and about how her credits would transfer to different 4-year institutions. She noted, “I remember reaching out to two different people asking for help navigating the online application process and I remember getting replies like, ‘We don’t really help with that. Here are links to FAQs.’” This response may have also turned her away from the institution. She explained the challenges as follows:

The document upload system was confusing and getting my transcript—that was confusing. I guess it was confusing to me because I wanted to do it right. I was so afraid of doing it wrong or messing something up . . . It would have been awesome to just get an email from an advisor saying, “You can do this. You can do this,” but instead it was like, “Here’s a link to an FAQ. We don’t talk to students,” even though I’ve been told to reach out to them for help. Then they just redirect me to an FAQ. It’s like, “Oh man, what do I do? No, this is confusing.” That also added onto the stress of that.

Most studies of the college-choice process incorrectly assume that “the completion of applications is trivial” once students have decided where to apply (Klasik, 2012, p. 508). This first-generation student, however, was no longer sure about her choice of institution, despite its being her primary choice in the prior year, in part because of the hurdle of applying. This experience with the upload process was a minor disturbance that reset her path. Rather than just apply again to the same university, she subsequently considered a broader range of options and became insecure and unsure about her initial decisions, even about her major or field of study, about which she had been certain before. Challenges with the application may have led her to reconsider her choices altogether, perhaps because without a network of peers or advisers to help her interpret this “signal” from the university, she may have read it as an indication of whether or not she belonged at the institution.

In contrast, another student described a similarly stressful process of applying to the same university, but managed to transfer successfully. This was a third-generation college student, however, who came from an affluent family with strong social networks that helped her attend community college strategically to improve her chances before transferring. She noted that the application process was “very stressful at first,” especially “how to do a resume and then the essays.” However, she received help from her counselor and from the university’s admissions center, where she was able to attend in person to receive answers to her questions about her application. She also faced hurdles in the registration, but she received advice from counselors and her network to stay enrolled at the community college part-time while starting at the 4-year institution. Her family and networks also gave her advice about acceptance to the university and the best way to achieve her goal of admission. Therefore, although she faced hurdles similar to those for the previous student, they did not derail her application process or cause her to consider alternative institutions.

Other students, particularly those who were the first in their family to attend college, noted similar drops in confidence throughout the transfer process, often due to a failed course, an incorrect course, or a mark on their record. One student was admitted to The University of Texas at Austin, but failed an accounting course at another 4-year institution in the semester prior to transfer. She thought she could retake the course at the community college and reapply, but it turned out that her grade was only averaged, setting her back another semester. She then transferred back to her original 4-year university, began to question her initial decision about transferring to Austin, and considered other universities as well. Another student received poor information about the math course that he needed to transfer to the business school at his university of choice, which set him back in his plans. Although we did not observe a complete derailing of their transfer plans, or a new path, none of these students successfully transferred although all intended to do so within 12 months of their first interview.

In the field of ecology, catastrophic disturbances are minor disturbances or small changes that can upset a whole ecosystem over time (e.g., Scheffer & Carpenter, 2003). Similarly, for community college students, seemingly minor hurdles or barriers along the way did not just cause them to reapply the following year, but rather reset their entire process, causing them to start over, consider new options, and go back to the first stage of decision-making. This was not the case for all students. Several students who faced a rejection in Year 1 simply reapplied, modifying their major if it was in a competitive field or getting assistance with their application essays. The repetitive process of applying, however, derailed other students, and it created a sense of doubt about the whole transfer process. Minor setbacks thus became major ones for some students but not for others, depending on the student’s background, available support, and social capital. In other words, how students interpreted these minor setbacks, as potential “signals” from institutions about whether they belonged, influenced their trajectories (e.g., Reeves et al., 2020).

Discussion

Overall, the findings of this study reveal that the structure, cycle, and timing of decision-making is unique for community college students seeking transfer. Our work offers a new understanding of how transfer students navigate the college-choice process. Despite a large body of research that suggests that college decisions are made sequentially, “with each stage reducing the set of potential options” (Bruch & Feinberg, 2017, p. 211), that was not the case for many students in our sample. We found that community college students’ decision-making departed from the linear models of choice in the literature (Hossler & Gallagher, 1987), and even from more complex models of choice (Acevedo-Gil, 2017; Cox, 2016; Radford, 2013), in part due to a more complicated timeline of decision-making, as well as more complex and interdependent decisions involving educational choices, career, and family. Our work connects with the existing critiques and extensions of linear college choice models (e.g., Acevedo-Gil, 2017; Cox, 2016; Perna, 2006; Radford, 2013), but it builds on this research by illuminating how students not only repeat stages of the choice cycle, but may also repeat the entire process multiple times, in part due to particular institutional conditions in the community college transfer context. Students may move back and forth through stages of decision-making, sometimes doing so multiple times, in fits and starts. Flexibility in when to transfer created additional uncertainty as well as multiple rounds of applications. Research suggests that the timing of transfer matters for degree completion (Andrews et al., 2014).

For a subset of students, hurdles along the way derailed decision-making, lengthening their timeline to transfer. Some students experienced catastrophic disturbances, seemingly minor disturbances during their transfer process that caused some to restart the entire college-choice process, question whether or not they wanted to transfer anymore, or return to the first stage of decision-making. According to Hossler and Gallagher’s (1987) model of college choice, “students move toward an increased understanding of their educational options as they seek a postsecondary educational experience” (p. 208). This is the case for some students, but others are derailed by catastrophic disturbances that seem to cause them to “forget” what they have learned, start over, reset the whole process, or call it into question. Although the literature acknowledges that community college students in particular often face major hurdles from out-of-school factors, “complicating conditions” (Cox, 2016), and “life” issues that come up (Somers et al., 2006), there is less research on how these relatively minor and typically more controllable events become signals or messages that students interpret on the basis of their experiences and social capital in such a way that can derail or reset the choice-making process.

Students with less social capital or fewer sources of information might be particularly vulnerable to such setbacks because they might have fewer resources to help them interpret and respond to signals from higher education institutions (Reeves et al., 2020). Minor hurdles and hassles, such as applying for aid or completing applications, can be harder for low-income and first-generation students to overcome, thus preventing them from transferring (Scott-Clayton, 2015) because college-going is not their default or status quo path (Avery & Kane, 2004). Students from marginalized groups—students of color, first-generation students—may interpret minor setbacks in particular ways. For example, they may view these relatively minor interactions as indicative of the fairness of the higher education systems or institutions (Reeves et al., 2020). These students are already questioning their belonging in institutions of higher education (Walton & Cohen, 2007) and, as Reeves et al. (2020) have found, even minor bureaucratic hassles can influence their sense of belonging, apart from academics or performance. Such interactions can serve as another form of gatekeeping.

In this way, our work aligns with that of others who have argued that traditional college choice models may be too simplistic and linear (Radford, 2013), rooted in White, middle-class norms of college-going behavior (Freeman, 1997; Perna, 2006; St. John, 1991). Given that the community college student population is more diverse, with a greater share of first-generation college students and students of color, we need new models of decision-making to capture particular contexts of the transfer process. Our findings suggest critiques of traditional college choice models when applied to community college students. We have identified how decision-making in the community college context, with its uncertain timelines and lack of structure, differs from high school students’ decisions, as well as the strategies students use to combat uncertainty and the overwhelming number of college choices.

Our research makes several contributions to theory about college choice for community college students. First, we have examined the process of decision-making longitudinally, “the evolution of choice sets over time” (Bell, 2009, p. 197), rather than captured just one snapshot of community college students’ choice sets. As Deterding (2015) has noted, “recent research suggests that educational attainment—particularly for disadvantaged students—is a process that unfolds over time and interacts with other aspects of the transition to adulthood” (p. 285). Some students progress through the phases of predisposition, search, and choice, and successfully transfer (about 25% of the students in our sample); others become stalled in the search stage and do not make a choice owing to various factors. Drawing on Radford’s (2013) more detailed stages of the transition to college, we found that after the application stage, some students returned to exploration despite a favorable admissions decision. Sometimes, they swirled repeatedly between stages, receiving admissions but not matriculating, and then went back to explore options further and consider a new set of choices. This has important implications for equity. Indeed, research has found that while students of all backgrounds tend to move between higher education institutions, lower income students are more likely to have their enrollment interrupted, often due to greater personal or financial barriers to persistence (Cox, 2016; Goldrick-Rab, 2006). Therefore, the multiple rounds of applications, and moving between institutions, may have negative impacts, particularly for low-income students.

Furthermore, all students begin with bounded choice sets. Although having a very limited or small choice set may seem less than ideal (i.e., considering only one university), for some students a small choice set can be liberating or positive as they try to keep options at a minimum due to the paradox of choice. These types of “closed searches” (Bell, 2009), rather than “open” ones, can help students manage overwhelming amounts of information and options for transfer institutions. Finally, although our focus is on community college students, it is not clear that these processes should be viewed as completely distinct from those of “traditional” college students, as nearly half of the students begin at a community college (Cox, 2016), and there is significant swirling between institutions (Schudde & Goldrick-Rab, 2015). In other words, how community college students make decisions is an essential part of the higher education landscape, and it is essential for “understanding students’ postsecondary paths” (Cox, 2016, pp. 3–4).

Implications

Given the policy environment in Texas, with its hyper-decentralized system that places greater burden on the student to navigate a complex web of agreements (Bailey et al., 2017) from institution to institution, there may be a greater chance that students will obtain inaccurate or ever-changing criteria for transfer. The transfer process may be further complicated by any changes in major or choice of transfer destination because students often need to work with each 4-year university to obtain necessary information regarding transfer. Each change in decision can create major setbacks due to the lack of statewide articulation agreements, making students’ decisions more “high stakes.” Therefore, such choice processes may be different in more structured settings with particular timelines or transfer windows or where higher education is more centralized. Adopting a policy of statewide articulation or binding transfer agreements could help to improve transfer and limit the pressures placed on students as they navigate the system.

Our work also suggests that information-based interventions regarding college choice (e.g., websites, financial aid, tailored advising, and nudges) could be targeted toward not only high school students, but also community college students. Indeed, students described how most national website resources addressed high school seniors and often lacked information relevant to community college students. We acknowledge critiques by researchers that information interventions fall short of addressing broader structural inequities (Cox, 2016), yet we argue that institutional attention to the specific and varied informational needs of community college students seeking transfer, with repeated efforts at guidance that reflect the nonlinear, nonsequential experiences of those students, could drive successful transfer. In particular, 4-year institutions could provide either more direct advising to prospective transfer students or coordinate information sharing with community college advisors, who could then guide students through the complexity of the transfer process. Researchers, policy makers, and institutional staff from community colleges, 4-year institutions, and nonprofits should consider how they can leverage partnerships across sectors and create resources to address issues associated with choice and transfer, such as transfer credit applicability and course credit alignment.

Given that changes in students’ choice sets have tremendous implications in terms of the transferability of credit, institutions and policy makers could address issues related to transfer credit, notably making general education/core curriculum credits transferrable across institutions and applicable toward a student’s core requirements, not as elective credits. If course credit transfer and applicability are not major hurdles, students would be able to transfer to different institutions, or change the options in their choice sets, with limited negative consequences. Future research might use application or enrollment data to explore how community college students apply and enroll in transfer destinations over time, that is, how many rounds of applications are submitted, whether students seem to become discouraged over time, and the extent to which our findings are reflective of overall trends.

Limitations

Our research is, of course, limited in that we have examined institutions in Texas, which presents a very particular state context. Our findings might look different in contexts that are more centralized or have statewide articulation agreements. Furthermore, although our qualitative study is helpful for understanding students’ decision-making processes and building theory, we obviously cannot speak to whether these patterns and processes occur for community college students in general. However, with a deeper understanding of how students navigate the choice process, policy makers and researchers may be able to design better interventions and structures to support students’ goals of transferring from a community college to a 4-year institution.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Uri Treisman, Gil Naizer, David Yeager, and Britney Hott for their feedback on earlier drafts and presentations. Thanks to Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley and Carmen Serrata for research assistance. Data collection and analysis was generously supported by the Greater Texas Foundation Faculty Fellows Program. We also want to acknowledge infrastructure support from the Population Research Center at The University of Texas, supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD042849).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Huriya Jabbar

Catherine Hartman

Notes

Author Biographies

Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin in educational leadership and policy. Her research examines the social and political dimensions of market-based reforms and privatization in education. She is currently studying school choice policy and school leaders’ behavioral responses to competition; choice and decision-making in higher education; and teacher job choices, recruitment, and retention.

Eliza Epstein is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin studying liberatory, abolitionist, and decolonial theories, pedagogies, and policies. Her scholarship examines the potential of ethnic studies courses to generate humanizing educational alterities and futurities.

Joanna Sánchez is the Chief of Staff at Excelencia in Education, where she works to accelerate Latino student success in higher education. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Howard University, and has a PhD in education policy from the University of Texas at Austin.

Catherine Hartman is a postdoctoral research associate at the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on community college student success and student transfer from community colleges to four-year schools.

References

Acevedo-Gil

(2017). College-conocimiento: Toward an interdisciplinary college choice framework for Latinx students. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(6), 829–850. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1343294

Andrews

Lovenheim

M. F.

(2014). Heterogeneous paths through college: Detailed patterns and relationships with graduation and earnings. Economics of Education Review, 42, 93–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.07.002

Avery

Kane

T. J.

(2004). Student perceptions of college opportunities: The Boston COACH program. In Hoxby

C. M

(Ed.), College choices: The economics of where to go, when to go, and how to pay for it (pp. 355–394). University of Chicago Press.

Backes

Velez

E. D.

(2014). Who transfers and where do they go? Community College Students in Florida. http://www.aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/39th/backes_velez_commcollege_aefp2014.pdf

Bailey

Jenkins

Fink

Cullinane

Schudde

(2017). Policy levers to strengthen community college transfer student success in Texas. Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University. https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/policy-levers-to-strengthen-community-college-transfer-student-success-in-texas.pdf

Ball

S. J.

Davies

David

Reay

(2002). “Classification” and “judgement”: Social class and the “cognitive structures” of choice of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1), 51–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690120102854

Belfield

C. R.

Bailey

(2011). The benefits of attending community college: A review of the evidence. Community College Review, 39(1), 46–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091552110395575

Bell

C. A.

(2009). All choices created equal? The role of choice sets in the selection of schools. Peabody Journal of Education, 84(2), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/01619560902810146

Bers

T. H.

Galowich

P. M.

(2002). Using survey and focus group research to learn about parents’ roles in the community college choice process. Community College Review, 29(4), 67–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/009155210202900404

10.

Bertrand

Mullainathan

Shafir

(2004). A behavioral-economics view of poverty. American Economic Review, 94(2), 419–423. https://doi.org/10.1257/0002828041302019

11.

Beshears

Choi

J. J.

Laibson

Madrian

B. C.

(2013). Simplification and saving. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 95, 130–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.03.007

12.

Bettinger

Long

B. T.

Oreopoulos

Sanbonmatsu

(2009). The role of simplification and information in college decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA experiment. The National Bureau of Economic Research.

13.

Black

S. E.

Cortes

K. E.

Lincove

J. A.

(2015). Apply yourself: Racial and ethnic differences in college application. The National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w21368

14.

Bruch

Feinberg

(2017). Decision-making processes in social contexts. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 207–227. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053622

15.

Cabrera

A. F.

La Nasa

S. M.

(2000). Understanding the college-choice process. New Directions for Institutional Research, 2000(107), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.10701

16.

Castleman

B. L.

Schwartz

Baum

(Eds.). (2015). Decision making for student success: Behavioral insights to improve college access and persistence. Routledge.

17.

Castro

E. L.

Cortez

(2017). Exploring the lived experiences and intersectionalities of Mexican community college transfer students: Qualitative insights toward expanding a transfer receptive culture. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 41(2), 77–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2016.1158672

18.

Cox

R. D.

(2016). Complicating conditions: Obstacles and interruptions to low-income students’ college “choices.” The Journal of Higher Education, 87(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2016.11777392

19.

Crisp

Nuñez

A.-M.

(2014). Understanding the racial transfer gap: Modeling underrepresented minority and nonminority students’ pathways from two-to four-year institutions. The Review of Higher Education, 37(3), 291–320. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2014.0017

20.

Deil-Amen

(2006). “Warming up” the aspirations of community college student. In Rosenbaum

Deil-Amen

Person

(Eds.), From college access to college success (pp. 40–65). Russell Sage Foundation.

21.

Deil-Amen

Rosenbaum

J. E.

(2003). The social prerequisites of success: Can college structure reduce the need for social know-how? The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 586, 120–143. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1049723

22.

Deterding

N. M.

(2015). Instrumental and expressive education: College planning in the face of poverty. Sociology of Education, 88(4), 284–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040715603428

23.

Doyle

W. R.

(2009). The effect of community college enrollment on bachelor’s degree completion. Economics of Education Review, 28(2), 199–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.01.006

24.

Dynarski

S. M.

Scott-Clayton

(2006). The cost of complexity in federal student aid: Lessons from optimal tax theory and behavioral economics (NBER Working Paper 12227). The National Bureau of Economic Research.

25.

Flint

T. A.

(1992). Parental and planning influences on the formation of student college choice sets. Research in Higher Education, 33(6), 689–708. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992054

26.

Freeman

(1997). Increasing African Americans’ participation in higher education: African American high-school students’ perspective. The Journal of Higher Education, 68(5), 523–550. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.1997.11778996

27.

Freeman

(1999). The race factor in African Americans’ college choice. Urban Education, 34(1), 4–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085999341002

28.

Gandara

Alvarado

Driscoll

Orfield

(2012). Building pathways to transfer: Community colleges that break the chain of failure for students of color. Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED529493

29.

Gildersleeve

R. E.

(2010). Fracturing opportunity: Mexican migrant students and college-going literacy. Peter Lang.

30.

Glaser

B. G.

Strauss

A. L.

(1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine.

31.

Goldrick-Rab

(2006). Following their every move: An investigation of social-class differences in college pathways. Sociology of Education, 79(1), 67–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/003804070607900104

32.

Grubb

W. N.

(1991). The decline of community college transfer rates: Evidence from national longitudinal surveys. The Journal of Higher Education, 62(2), 194–222. https://doi.org/10.2307/1982145

33.

Hilmer

M. J.

(1997). Does community college attendance provide a strategic path to a higher quality education? Economics of Education Review, 16(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7757(96)00018-0

34.

Horn

(1997). Confronting the odds: Students at risk and the pipeline to higher education. Statistical analysis report. National Center for Education Statistics.

35.

Hossain

Morgan

(2006). . . . Plus shipping and handling: Revenue (non) equivalence in field experiments on eBay. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 5(2), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0637.1429

36.

Hossler

Gallagher

K. S.

(1987). Studying student college choice: A three-phase model and the implications for policymakers. College and University, 62(3), 207–221.

37.

Iloh

(2018). Toward a new model of college “choice” for a twenty-first-century context. Harvard Educational Review, 88(2), 227–244. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-88.2.227

38.

Iyengar

S. S.

Jiang

Huberman

(2003). How much choice is too much? Contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Pension Research Council, University of Pennsylvania.

39.

Jenkins

Fink

(2016). Tracking transfer: New measures of institutional and state effectiveness in helping community college students attain bachelor’s degrees. Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.

40.

Klasik

(2012). The college application gauntlet: A systematic analysis of the steps to four-year college enrollment. Research in Higher Education, 53(5), 506–549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-011-9242-3

41.

Lee

V. E.

Frank

K. A.

(1990). Students’ characteristics that facilitate the transfer from two-year to four-year colleges. Sociology of Education, 63(3), 178–193. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112836

42.

Lee

V. E.

Mackie-Lewis

Marks

H. M.

(1993). Persistence to the baccalaureate degree for students who transfer from community college. American Journal of Education, 102(1), 80–114. https://doi.org/10.1086/444059

43.

Leigh

D. E.

Gill

A. M.

(2003). Do community colleges really divert students from earning bachelor’s degrees? Economics of Education Review, 22(1), 23–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7757(01)00057-7

44.

Long

B. T.

(2004). How have college decisions changed over time? An application of the conditional logistic choice model. Journal of Econometrics, 121, 271–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconom.2003.10.004

45.

Long

B. T.

Kurlaender

(2009). Do community colleges provide a viable pathway to a baccalaureate degree? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(1), 30–53. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373708327756

46.

Baum

(2016). Trends in community colleges: Enrollment, prices, student debt, and completion. College Board.

47.

McDonough

P. M.

(1997). Choosing colleges: How social class and schools structure opportunity. State University of New York.

48.

Melguizo

Dowd

A. C.

(2009). Baccalaureate success of transfers and rising 4-year college juniors. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 55–89.

49.

Miles

M. B.

Huberman

A. M.

Saldaña

(2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook. SAGE.

50.

Miller

Goldrick-Rab

(2015). Making sense of transitions: An examination of transfer among economically disadvantaged undergraduates. Wisconsin Hope Lab, University of Wisconsin–Madison. https://www.forestoftherain.net/making-sense-of-transitions-an-examination-of-transfer-among-economically-disadvantaged-undergraduates.html

51.

Nielsen

(2015). “Fake it ’til you make it”: Why community college students’ aspirations “hold steady.” Sociology of Education, 88(4), 265–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040715601889

52.

Patton

M. Q.

(1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. SAGE.

53.

Perna

L. W.

(2006). Studying college access and choice: A proposed conceptual model. In Smart

J. C.

(Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. XXI, pp. 99–157). Springer.

54.

Rabin

Weizsacker

(2009). Narrow bracketing and dominated choices. American Economic Review, 99(4), 1508–1543. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.99.4.1508

55.

Radford

A. W.

(2013). Top student, top school? How social class shapes where valedictorians go to college. University of Chicago Press.

56.

Read

Loewenstein

Rabin

(1999). Choice bracketing. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 19(1–3), 171–197. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007879411489

57.

Reeves

S. L.

Yeager

D. S.

D’Mello

Murphy

M. C.

(2020). Caught up in red tape: Bureaucratic hassles undermine sense of belonging in college among first-generation students [Manuscript under revision].

58.

Scheffer

Carpenter

S. R.

(2003). Catastrophic regime shifts in ecosystems: Linking theory to observation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18(12), 648–656. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2003.09.002

59.

Schudde

Goldrick-Rab

(2015). On second chances and stratification: How sociologists think about community colleges. Community College Review, 43(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091552114553296

60.

Schwartz

(2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. HarperCollins.

61.

Scott-Clayton

(2015). The shapeless river: Does a lack of structure inhibit students’ progress at community colleges?. In Castleman

B. L.

Schwartz

Baum

(Eds.), Decision making for student success: Behavioral insights to improve college access and persistence (pp. 102–123). Routledge.

62.

Shaw

K. M.

London

H. B.

(2001). Culture and ideology in keeping transfer commitment: Three community colleges. The Review of Higher Education, 25(1), 91–114. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2001.0015

63.

Soares

(2013). Post-traditional learners and the transformation of postsecondary education: A manifesto for college leaders. American Council on Education.

64.

Somers

Haines

Keene

Bauer

Pfeiffer

McCluskey

… Sparks

(2006). Towards a theory of choice for community college students. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 30(1), 53–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668920500248886

65.

St. John

E. P.

(1991). What really influences minority attendance? Sequential analyses of the high school and beyond sophomore cohort. Research in Higher Education, 32(2), 141–158. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00974434

66.

Texas Association of Community Colleges. (2018). Texas community colleges. https://www.tacc.org/pages/texas-colleges

67.

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. (2017). Texas general academic institutions: Increasing successful community college transfer. http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/reports/PDF/10114.PDF?CFID=78357783&CFTOKEN=21668227

68.

Tierney

M. L.

(1983). Student college choice sets: Toward an empirical characterization. Research in Higher Education, 18(3), 271–284. https://www-jstor-org-443.web.bisu.edu.cn/stable/40195537

69.

Tierney

W. G.

Venegas

K. M.

(2009). Finding money on the table: Information, financial aid, and access to college. The Journal of Higher Education, 80(4), 363–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2009.11779021

70.

Tobolowsky

Bers

(2019). Stops, starts, and detours: Transfer students’ college choice process. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 43(8), 573–584. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2018.1515126

71.

Walton

G. M.

Cohen

G. L.

(2007). A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 82–96. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.82

72.

Wassmer

Moore

Shulock

(2004). Effect of racial/ethnic composition on transfer rates in community colleges: Implications for policy and practice. Research in Higher Education, 45(6), 651–672. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:RIHE.0000040267.68949.d1

73.

Yin

R. K.

(2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). SAGE.